By Catherine Namugerwa
A woman finds her husband defiling their 6-year-old daughter. In shock, anger and confusion, she reports the incident to local authorities. She receives no immediate redress. Instead, she was called names and her in-laws ostracized her. Together with her seven children, the 47-year-old woman was banished from her matrimonial home in Rubaare Town Council, Ntungamo District, by her in-laws.
Her husband, the accused, was eventually arrested after a protracted struggle. But that marked the beginning of the woman’s despair.
“I have been living [in a violent relationship] with my husband; he has been beating me whenever he becomes drunk and there is no office we have never reached to resolve our issues. When I found him sleeping with our child and reported it, everyone thought I was mad, but when I took him before the village elders, he admitted it before his in-laws but told me to take it to the police. This was hard for me,” she narrates.
She says this was not the first time she found her husband defiling their daughters but at a meeting of elders and locals, she was asked to forgive him for defiling their 12-year-old daughter, an elder sister to the six-year-old he had earlier been accused of defiling.
When she reported the incident to police, that is when the in-laws turned against her, and hid the man from arrest for a whole year. This is after he publicly admitted the offenses to his relatives in a meeting.
“My in-laws organized a meeting attended by police officers from Ntungamo Police Family and Child Protection where we were forced to separate and sign a consent of separation before the police officers, who threatened to arrest me if I don’t (comply),” she says.
After separation, she sought the intervention of a legal aid organization, Uganda Network for Human rights and HIV/AIDS (UGANET) to have her husband arrested and arraigned before court.
He was finally arrested on May 1, 2023 and arraigned in court and has been on remand since then on charges of aggravated defilement. He has been appearing in court for mention of his case as police conclude investigations. He will reappear in court on 16 October for further mention of the case.
For the evicted family, however, these are trying times. Following the man’s arrest, the in-laws, according to the woman, continue to threaten, insult and even assault her and her children. They have also been banned from the land and properties they had been given by the family during the meeting where they were forced to separate before the husband was arrested.
She was assaulted by some in-laws on February 3 as she tried to sell a cow to take one of their children, who is in S4, to school. The case was reported to the police. Her current landlord has also given her a written notice to vacate the premises, citing threats from her in-laws.
One of her in-laws is the village chairperson while another one serves as a district councilor for Rubaare Town Council.
They, however, say the accuser is using the defilement case to have her husband simply incarcerated for long because of standing family disagreements. He says they have not been threatening the woman though they (in-laws) have been trying to mediate and see how the family matters can be resolved without affecting the children more.
“She is our wife and we can’t dismiss our children from home, but we are mediating to see that this does not affect everyone. No one has dismissed her from her home. These two have been having too much violence between them and the woman is using the defilement case to turn things around,” he says.
Ms Asumpta Ekyakunzire, the Uganet Coordinator for Ntungamo District, says while the case was reported in 2022, the accused could only be arrested in 2023, meaning there was a lot of mystery to the case.
“What we asked ourselves before being involved was why it had taken so long to arrest the suspect yet the case had evidence on file, including the police form by a medical doctor proving penetrative sex on the victim. When he was arrested then the in-laws started visiting all offices to [get] him out. There are many women silently suffering there because they fear [backlash from their communities],” Ekyakunzire says.
The Ntungamo District police commander, Mr Hannington Bushaija Kanimi, says domestic violence is the second leading cause of many crimes, especially those at family level including murder.
The Ntungamo Woman Member of Parliament, Ms Josyline Kamateneti, notes that more effort is needed, especially at local and civic level to sensitize families and look for tangible remedies against sex and gender-based violence in the district.
