By Allieu Sahid Tonkara
A child aged 12, name withheld, looks pale and famished. She is four-month old pregnant, and hailed from a humble background in a very remote area in Sierra Leone.
The pregnancy is a direct result of her step-father’s routine sexual penetration. Her survival is in big doubt as medics at the Rainbow Centre at the Bo government hospital have recommended a caesarean operation.
As victim grapples with the trauma, the perpetrator, Simeon Williams, is currently held behind bars for his alleged nefarious action on the victim who represents the thousands of women and girls that have gone through the ordeal.
This sad state of affairs have left many wondering and questioning the effectiveness of the relevant sexual and gender laws in the country as well as the country enforcement machineries. This is especially so against repeated commission of these crimes against innocent and helpless victims.
Confirming the horrible situation in an exclusive interview with the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation, Head of Strategic Communication Unit in the Ministry of Information and Communications, Joe Abu Bakarr Sesay, painted a grim and gore statistics of sexual and gender based violence. Women and girls continue to suffer. Sesay explained that hundreds of these offences are reported every month and that 70% of the victims are under the age of 15.
The Communication Unit Head continued that, last year, 3,000 sexually related offences were reported to the Sierra Leone Police Family Support Unit (FSU). Out of this figure, he continued, 602 victims became pregnant as a result of the sexual abuse, 7 infected with HIV/AIDS, 2,404 contracted sexually transmitted disease or infections such as gonorrhea and syphilis, among others.
This rolling statistics of the sexual and gender based violence has become a constant source of embarrassment for the government especially the low rate of convictions in courts of law for perpetrators of these heinous offences.
“Out of the 3,000 sexual offences reported last year, only 39 were successfully prosecuted and the 2,961 were denied justice,” Joe explained.
Quite recently, close to 1,000 teenage pregnancies were recorded in Pujehun district in the Southern part of the country with fingers pointing at teachers and other government workers as the perpetrators though no investigations were conducted into these allegations by appropriate authorities.
This repugnantly ironical situation leaves parents in shock and awe as the protectors become the abusers. As if to prove the truth of such allegations, five general duty police officers attached to Bo West Police Division allegedly sexually penetrated a 17-year old girl whilst in execution of their police duties.
The matter against the suspected criminals in police uniform is being heard in court while others are on the run.
THE FEAR FACTOR
The fear factor, to a large extent, nurtures these violent sexual crimes as victims, especially children of tender ages, are hesitant to go to police stations and explain their bitter experience. Most times, these victims are threatened by perpetrators, at the time of the sexual abuse, not to divulge any information to a relative or any other person. The victims would continue to suffer in silence until the sexual abuse is discovered by a relative or a neighbor at a time when the evidence has diminished. No wonder the low number of successful prosecutions. Throughout this period, the victims live in constant fear of the perpetrators who bear the uncontrollable sexual appetite to further abuse them. Mitigating the fear of repeating these violent crimes, safe homes have been established by charitable organisations to provide temporal shelter for victims in order to separate them from their perpetrators. It is no gainsaying that victims of sexual abuse are associated with a high degree of trauma thus making a strong case for centres of psycho-social counselling to be set up.
The fear factor is also showcased in women by refusing to report their husbands who subject them to violence at police stations for investigations. These women bear the fear of who would take care of the bread-and-butter issues if their husbands are locked up for abusing them. This abhorrent situation is very much visible in the rural areas where men, mostly, are the sole bread winners. Since women’s capacity to fend for themselves is reduced to the lowest level, they will always remain vulnerable in the hands of men. This miserable condition women have found themselves in is as a result of their long period of protracted neglect by depriving them of educational opportunities.
Strategic policing advisor, who is a British expatriate, attached to the International Security Advisory Team, Helen Williams, has occasionally made comparative analyses on the prosecution of sexual offences in Britain and in Sierra Leone. She made these analyses during annual meetings of FSU line managers held in Freetown. The policing advisor informed the FSU heads that whenever a woman is abused by a spouse in England, the state takes care of the victim and the perpetrator is sent to prison for correction. This is a way of demonstrating to the people, she disclosed, that the British does not tolerate physical or sexual abuse of women and girls.
THE EMERGENCE OF A LIFE THREATENING SITUATION IN SIERRA LEONE
As these violent crimes continue unabated, the country has come under threat, prompting the authorities to come up with strategies to stem the tide of sexual abuse. One such bold move was the declaration of a national emergency by President Maada Bio with the pronouncement of a life imprisonment for all perpetrators of sexual offences. The President’s pronouncement was bolstered by a memorandum released under the directive of the Chief Justice to all judges in Sierra Leone. But President Bio’s effort to halt sexual abuse in the country has been checkmated by the Sierra Leone Bar Association (SLBA), a body of private and government lawyers, who took the position that Parliament, which is the supreme law making body in the country, has not amended the provisions of section 6 and 19 of the Sexual Offences Act No.12 of 2012. These provisions criminalise rape and sexual penetration respectively.
Sierra Leone Bar Association has further argued that a law passed by Parliament cannot be repealed or replaced by a mere declaration or directive. This implies that the Bar Association wants to see parliamentary powers being exercised by Parliament and not the executive arm of government.
Making her voice heard in the struggle for the eradication of sexual violence in the country is the country’s First Lady, Madam Fatima Bio, who recently launched a campaign known as the ‘HANDS OF OUR GIRLS’ being a zero-tolerance strategy in protecting girls from sexual violence. The occasion attracted prominent First Ladies across West Africa.
Prior to the declaration of national emergency by the President, several strategies were initiated by the FSU namely: ‘Operation Dusk’ and ‘Operation Dawn’, which are geared towards keeping children off from the streets viewed as fertile grounds for the abuse of children by unscrupulous persons.
In spite of this great effort by the authorities to put sexual violence under control, it still continues to occur at an alarming rate. Eyebrows are now raised by the Sierra Leonean public to see whether the national emergency declared by the President would attract support from donor communities as they did during the Ebola epidemic.