GULU, UGANDA – Just before Christmas, Irine Ayot, 42, found out that her 14-year-old daughter, Evelyn Acan, had been defiled.
Ayot, who earns a living selling fish and other goods at a market in Gulu, a district in northern Uganda, says she was waiting for Evelyn to pick her up after work, but her daughter never showed up. Ayot, crippled from a land mine explosion, sought help from someone else to carry her fish and other items home.
"There is need for strong measures to protect the children."
But when she arrived at their home in Alokolum, she didn’t find her daughter there. She says she became worried about what could have happened to her. She asked the neighbors, but nobody had seen Evelyn. She contacted the police, then decided to walk from door to door in her neighborhood to try to find her.
She soon found Evelyn at the home of a 25-year-old motorcycle taxi driver. Ayot says she didn’t know the man but learned that he was her daughter’s boyfriend. Angry, she told her daughter to come home. That was when the man’s family informed her that her daughter was pregnant.
She says she didn’t want to believe them, but later a medical test proved their claim. She went straight to the central police station in Gulu and reported her daughter’s boyfriend, telling police where to find him. The police arrested the man and charged him with defilement for having consensual sex with a minor. He is currently in jail, and the investigation is ongoing.
Although a protocol is in place for reporting defilement cases here, police say a lack of and late reporting hinder them from investigating cases. Some victims say their parents are too ashamed to report cases, while other parents say they don’t have the time and money necessary to follow up cases with police. Hospitals provide free care and testing to defilement victims, although doctors are not always available to administer time-sensitive treatment. In the justice system, familiarity with the suspect can aid in convictions, while lack of evidence or birth certificates hampers other cases.
Uganda’s Penal Code Act defines defilement as the performance of a sexual act with someone who is younger than 18. The difference between defilement and rape is consent of the victim, as long as it is not obtained by force or threats.
The act regards defilement as a felony, punishable by up to life in prison, while the punishment for attempted defilement can’t exceed 18 years in jail. The law also differentiates between simple and aggravated defilement – when the offender is infected with HIV or AIDS, is the parent or guardian of the victim, is a serial offender or when the victim is under 14. The punishment for aggravated defilement can be death, and the sentence for an attempt at aggravated defilement can be up to life in prison.
Last year, a total of 340 defilement cases were reported in Gulu district, says John Bosco Ozele, the police officer in charge of crime in the district. This was 22 fewer cases than reported the previous year, which Ozele attributes to community awareness programs that have been conducted by police and various nongovernmental organizations.
Ozele says that cases of defilement increase during the holidays because students are on vacation from school. He says this trend continued during this past holiday season.
Christine Apiyo is the officer in charge of the Child and Family Protection Unit at the police station where Ayot reported her daughter’s defilement. These units, located at most police stations across the country, aim to protect the welfare of the child in cases such as defilement.
