‘My uncle raped me over and over again’

For many years, Mirriam [not real name] kept a secret that haunted and tortured her. Raped regularly by her uncle when she was 11, she felt the agony that forced sex creates in victims. Mirriam opened up recently and told Bright Mhango how the uncle exploited her innocence.

“He could lie on top of me while I slept and I was powerless to topple him over. All this happened while my parents slept in the next room.”

Seventeen-year-old Mirriam can now afford to speak about the year-long sexual defilement she suffered at the hands of her father’s own brother. The first time she tried to talk about it, she cried, but she talked anyway.

She said she is freer and better now after telling her story.

Mirriam was speaking on the sidelines of a recent women’s rights consultative meeting organised by the Ministry of Gender in conjunction with Oxfam and NGO-Gender Coordination Network at Wamkulu Palace in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.

The meeting sought to hear issues of and from rural women for incorporation into the next set of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) coming after 2015.

“I was 11 years old and in Standard Five. We lived in a one bed-roomed house and when my father called his brother from the village to continue his studies here in Lilongwe, they had to partition the sitting room with a curtain so that my uncle slept on one side, us on the other and my parents in the only available room,” narrated Mirriam, clasping her dry hands and avoiding all eye contact.

The uncle was also apparently interested in acquiring some basic skills in incest and paedophilia. Between 2005 and 2006, he defiled the girl so many times that she lost count and could only say it happened at least weekly.

“Why did I not reveal it? He threatened to beat me and somehow I thought it was how life is supposed to be, but I was confused. I wondered if it was just me or it was universal. I could also not tell it for fear of my friends calling me names.

“I suppressed it, but it ate me away inside. I thought so hard that I felt I was going crazy. I needed my peace back, so I reported the incident to my parents,” narrated Mirriam.

Her report was lost in the family’s red tape as they agreed to chase the abusive uncle, but the decision was never implemented. Every day, therefore, meant Mirriam had to wake up next to her assailant.

“I hated him, didn’t want to look at him and when he asked me for anything I could answer him rudely. I suspect all men, I just think they want women for sex,” she said.

She said her peace started coming when she told her story to someone from Malawi Girl Guide Association.

Strangely, not even the organisation helped her in concrete terms.

All her fantasies were shattered because she dreamed of starting her sex life in secondary school. For the man who defiled her, she says, he needs God because he looks like he has an evil spirit in him. And she is ready to testify against him if she faced him in court.

“To all girls going through what I went through, let them not keep silent. It will only haunt them more. Let your stories out. You will feel better and remember to turn down all sexual advances,” she said.

Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Gender Mary Shawa, reacting to Mirriam’s story, said incest is a big problem in Malawi that urgently needs rooting out.

“The biggest challenge is the culture of silence; if you ask most of the victims, you will hear they have been silenced or threatened by their abusers.

“The court sentences on defilement have to be firmer and defilement cases taken seriously because, honestly, no child can just wake up and cook up a story to say they have been raped. Chiefs also need to take an active role. It’s sad to note that in the Victim Support Units across the country, there are no chiefs sitting in the committees,” said Shawa.

She said chiefs need to come up with their own bylaws of dealing with the issue and young girls should be trained in how they can repel rapists.

Shawa said the establishment of the Social Rehabilitation Centre will move to address some of the challenges girls are facing by housing those that run away from abusive home, giving them food, shelter and education.

Police figures show that there were seven reported cases of defilement in Malawi every month in 2012. This is likely an understatement considering the theory that most rape cases are not reported.

Sixty-seven cases of defilement and rape were reported in Lilongwe’s Mtandire Township alone in only one month, June 2012.

As for Mirriam, her story shocked audiences, like it did her father and the non-governmental organisations she has told it to, but none has so far moved to arrest the molester.

Maybe the one bed-roomed house is to blame.