Sexual Abuse and Rape in the Home

There is a phenomenon in Rwanda of children and young adults being sexually abused, often in their homes, by those they depend on for food security and education. As a A UNICEF report notes, increasing evidence "suggests that sexual abuse within the home has increased since the genocide." A paper by Siaens, Subbarao and Wodon for the World Bank note that sexual abuse is one of many problems orphans were more likely to face.

At the same time, numerous schools in Rwanda refuse to readmit any pregnant girls, regardless of the circumstances of their pregnancy. The result: girls raped and forcibly impregnated are expelled from school. This not only sends a message that being rape will result in punishment on the side of the educational institution, but on a practical level it decreases their job prospects for the future, increasing the type of dependency that can lead to further sexual abuse.

I met with a girl who lives over ten miles from the nearest middle school (lower secondary school). We will call her "Alice." In an earlier blog post I wrote about her experience taking a motorcycle taxi while in labor to the nearest health clinic, ten miles away. Her baby is the result of being raped by an older male family friend. After Alice completed primary school she stayed at home, like all of her seven siblings would do, because there was no public secondary school in the area, the closest primary school being over ten kilometers away. The man, in his thirties, asked her mother, "Why is she staying home? She can continue her education."

He paid for her school fees for a year, and she would walk, by foot, for over ten kilometers to the school and ten kilometers back. She finished her first year of lower secondary school and right before beginning her second year the man told her and her mother that he could provide a place to stay in his house near the school, near the main road, so she would not need to walk. In the middle of the school year, he came home drunk one day and raped her. She did not say anything to anyone, afraid of the shame. While she protested to him to stop, she did not scream, she says, because she was worried of how she would be judged.

When the man found out she was pregnant, he fled, I was told. "How do you know?" I asked. The mother of Alice told me they searched for him, and he was nowhere to be found. "He probably went to Uganda, where he was from."

"Did you go to the police?" I asked. They did not. Their logic was that they could not tell the police to arrest him if they did not know where he was. "Can you go now to the police, so they can search for him?" I asked. "It is to long ago." The assumed the police would not help, because they had waited.

The girl still nurses her son, a very cute, small, fidgety little nine month old boy who bravely sits on any lap and looks through any purse. He rarely cries, unless he thinks his mother is not around. He cuddles in the big, warm arms of his grandmother, who talks to him in the universal language of babies, mostly limited to "da da da da." He has a low, exited stutter when he is happy, such as when tasting the mostly-sugar pineapple juice I had in my bag. He stares at roosters, mesmerized by them, and is excited as his young uncles and aunts when an antelope runs by.

Alice wants to go back to school, her only concern being the lack of milk in their home. I am trying to raise enough money to help pay for her school fees and food for the baby, with the goal of reaching $2,500 to cover the first three years of school fees and some food.

Money is not the only solution - a better government policy is. The law must ensure that those who press charges are protected. And "protection," at the very least, should mean assurance that school is free and close enough so that girls do not need to rely on older male relatives and "family friends." Fear of leaving school, and not being readmitted due to lack of school fees and the pregnancy itself, discourages girls from pressing charges, encouraging more abuse.

Officially, the government supports some sort of re-admittance for all adolescent mothers. In this sense, those specifically pregnant from rape would have the right to return to school. Two governmental reports of the past five years have expressed strong support for readmitting girls into formal education. In 2008 the Ministry of Education Girls' Education Policy cites the Education For All (EFA/Education Pour Tous) policy as aiming, among other goals, to "sensitize women to go to school at all levels" which includes "facilitating girls who become pregnant to go back to school after delivery." (p. 7). In addition to the EFA policy promoting re-admittance of pregnant girls, affirmative action policies have specifically been discussed as needing to "place special emphasis for re-entry for girls who become pregnant during their education." (p. 15) The 2009 Evaluation of the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Programme of Action discusses the issue of pregnant adolescent girls. According to the report, in Rwanda "...no girl is excluded from school due to pregnancy." Another section of the report states that "In Rwanda, pregnant children are not chased out of school; besides, married women can attend school."

"Girls," the report states, "are readmitted in schools after delivery."

In some ways, this appears to be consistent with a growing trend in Africa as a whole, where legal protection of pregnant girls allows, at least officially, for their readmittance. As a World Bank report by Esi Sutherland-Addy comments, Botswana, Zambia and Malawi allow girls to go back to school after delivery. Closer by in Kenya, a "Gender and Education Policy developed in 2003 makes provision for the re-admission of girls who become pregnant while still at school, even allowing them to seek a place at a different institution to the one they originally attended." Eliud Kinuthia from the Kenyan branch of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), which lobbies for girls education throughout the continent, noted that though the Kenyan policy was pronounced, the implementation was still "left at the discretion of the head teachers and school boards to decide whether to re-admit the girls or not. In the event that the head teachers or school boards do not value girls' education, then the girls seeking re-admission suffer."

However, there are key differences, on even a policy level, between Rwanda and Kenya regarding the issue of readmittance. The wording of Rwanda's policy suggests that girls may have the right to continue education, but not the same education they started prior to pregnancy. Assuring "re-entry for girls who become pregnant," the EFA policy wording, does not specify where they will be readmitted to. It is not clear if girls have the right to continue studying for the national exams in the subject they began, or for the national exams at all. While "no girl is excluded from school due to pregnancy" it may be that all pregnant girls are excluded from most schools. While Kenya, at least officially, allows girls to choose between staying in the same institution and moving to a different institutions, Rwanda's vague policy wording suggests that pregnant girls can return to some institution, regardless of whether this institution is anywhere near the home of the girl.

In Alice's case, there is no public school available, and the closest private school is still ten mile away. Boarding school is the only option and, in her case, because her mother is ready and happy to raise the baby, the only thing missing is money to pay school fees. But most will never find this money.

A lot of the rhetoric surrounding abuse is discouraging girls from giving in to temptation and encouraging them to fight against manipulation. Billboards throughout Rwanda show girls fighting temptation from "sugar daddies." The campaign, sponsored by USAID, is called "Sinigurisha" or "I am not for sale."

But what if the abuse is not about irrational, short-term weakness? It could be outward rape - forcing someone to have sex with physical force. More important, even if there is no physical force involved, there is a problem with the assumption that the girls are being manipulated into taking decisions that are not in their interest.

It is in the their interest, and public policy should be designed so that it isn't. These girls are smart and they are not weak. Many girls are rational, and not manipulated, as the bill boards suggest. They are strong, and their strength should be recognized by providing school fees and living expenses, and not public service announcements warning against dangers which everyone is perfectly aware of.

An article on IRIN, the humanitarian news site for the UN, hardly discusses the economic needs that lead to sugar daddies. Their only concrete example is one school girl who tells us, "When children can't get something at home, like a cell phone, they go to these sugar daddies and sugar mummies and get it from them." Another example is university students who finance their studies with sugar daddies.

Cell phones. That is the example given for "economic needs" of secondary school students. While food security is high, Rwanda is still a country where most struggle to pay for fees after primary school, and all I have talked to struggle to pay for upper secondary school fees. It is not only university age students, it is younger girls who are meant to receive the most basic of lower secondary school education for free, but who often cannot.

Don't get me wrong - I think the Sinigurisha campaign may be effective in decreasing cross-generational sex. As this article by Kristof rights points out, the campaign may save the most lives per dollar by decreasing the cross generational sex that leads to HIV. But it does not necessarily protect the most rights per dollar and prevent the type of rape and sexual abuse that has become so prevalent in East Africa.

It is good that there is a campaign to warn people against dangers, if only because if fuels public discussion on a topic that was previously taboo. But the discussion needs to shift away from warnings and focus on the lack of choices many girls have - both because they need to pay for school fees, and because many are raped by the guardians who supply the most basic necessities of food and shelter. One article on the campaign says that cross generational sex is "wrong, shameful and risky." And this kind of rhetoric prevents girls from speaking out when they are raped or abused: because cross-generational sex is "shameful."

From the same, Alice says she never left the house the entire time she was pregnant, and still rarely does, nine months after the child's birth.

I have seen multiple cases of girls who still depend on older male rapists even after it becomes clear that they are in danger. In Alice's case, her rapist was not someone she relied on for food and she has a mother who takes care of the baby and a rapist who fled, presumably, to Uganda. While I hope I can find the funds to assist her return to school, a government policy that recognizes the lack of choice, and not only bad choices, is necessary.

There are many girls who wish to return to school after giving birth to children the result of rape. For now, I am collecting money from friends and family and giving it to them, with monitoring done by the girls' reliable adult friends and family who are helping raise the children. School fees for one year cost $500 and food, clothes, and other expenses another $500. If you would like to help Alice or others in this specific situation, please send an e-mail to me at helpingalice@gmail.com.