Rehabilitating abused girls

In a halting low toned voice betraying anxiety, 17-year-old teenage mother, Kansiime, points me to a wooden bench outside her grandmother's hovel in Rwengobe village, Kamwenge district.

Just inches away as I prepare to sit, is her visibly apprehensive grandmother. Seated on a papyrus mat, she repeatedly clutches at her rosary as I say my salutations. Unable to hold back tears, Kansiime plaintively narrates how she unwittingly became a young mother at age 15.

"I was sexually exploited by one of the construction workers on the Fort Portal- Kamwenge road in 2016," Kansiime says. Needless to add, Kansiime became pregnant. Kansiime insists she was pressured into sex in a dark place where her cries for help went unheard. "I regret the ordeal, as it ruined my education. It shattered my dreams," she laments.

By then, Kansiime was in P.6 at Rwengobe Primary School. The father of her child ran off after he caught wind of her pregnancy. To this day, Kansiime does not know his whereabouts; denoting that she has to take care of her two-year-old child by herself.

The experience of being a single mother has constantly eaten away at Kansiime's conscience and made her depressed. Kansiime was not the only young girl trapped and sexually exploited by men involved in the construction of the Fort Portal-Kamwenge road.

Kayesu from Itaali village in Kamwenge, did not survive either. Kayesu was 15 when she was forced to copulate with a man she barely knew. Like Kansiime, she also became pregnant. "I was studying at Rutera Primary School.

On my way back from school the men at the construction site decided to use a friend of mine who worked in Rutera trading centre to persuade me. I had no idea that she had been bribed to spike my drink," Kayesu recounts.

Because she trusted her friend, Kayesu unwittingly took the drink. She blacked out a few minutes later. Kayesu found herself in an unfamiliar dark room, the next day. CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON THIS STORY