Woman activist tears over a victim's ordeal

Mar 03, 2012

A woman rights activist broke down in tears when a woman told of how, when she was 14, a man raped and impregnated her in Amuru district.

By Francis Emorut

A woman rights activist broke down in tears when a woman told of how, when she was 14, a man raped and impregnated her in Amuru district.

Years back, Josephine Ayaa, now a student of nursing in Lira district, was forced into sex while out in the woods to collect firewood.

Her ordeal gripped the emotions of the people around, and one of them cried.

Hanna Anere, an official with Ford Foundation, an international organization could not hold back her tears as Ayaa retold her experience before legal volunteers and officials from the organization.

She said her parents forced her to marry the man who raped her, and now she has five children with him.

Ayaa is the first of the 18 wives the man has married. But she cites a sense of disharmony and torture in her marriage with the man who deprived her of her virginity at an early age.

“My husband keeps beating me and does not provide any welfare for the children yet my parents tell me that I should stay in the marriage because the man paid dowry,” she sobbed.

 “I don’t know how FIDA-Uganda can help me.”alt=''

 Ayaa has been married for 16 years and said she has sought legal redress in Kiryadongo Magistrates Court but has not got any help.

 Aged 29, the young woman from northern Uganda narrated her story during the legal aid education for residents of Kawempe, Mulago and Kamwokya during a visit by Ford Foundation officials to FIDA-Uganda offices in Kampala on Friday.

 Anere kept crying as Ayaa narrated her ordeal.

 Anere later told the New Vision that she was touched by the young woman’s sad story and said women should not suffer under the hands of men who are supposed to protect them.

“Being married off at such a tender age, a wife among 18 married women and struggling to look for school fees for her children is a painful experience,” Anere said.

 Harriet Nabankema, a legal aid clinic manager of FIDA- Uganda said her organization would follow up the case and file for a divorce case.

“The relationship has irretrievably broken down. The husband has not contributed to child welfare and that’s why we shall file for a divorce case,” Nabankema said.

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