Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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New Vision (Kampala) - November 5, 2007
Alice Emasu
At Mangeri's home, which is only a stone-throw away, Atim did not find any food in the compound. Instead, Mangeri invited her to join her husband, Emmanuel Ekosile, who was drinking Ajono (a local brew) on their verandah.
Atim, an orphan, dropped out of school in Primary Four in primary in Katakwi.
When the young girl refused to drink, Mangeri sweet talked her and asked her to go and bathe and join them for supper as she waited for the rain to subside. She told the girl she would escort her back to her home since it was getting dark.
As they were having supper, Mangeri dropped the bombshell: "From today, you are the younger wife of my husband. You will sleep with him tonight in our bed. I will sleep here on the floor."
Atim screamed as she rushed towards the door to flee but she was not lucky enough.
"Mangeri's husband grabbed and undressed me. When I tried to fight, he slapped me hard in the face and forced me into his bed. He threatened to kill me if I cried or reported him to the Police. He defiled me three times that night as his wife kept guard," Atim recounts.
The following morning, Atim says, Mangeri rushed to report her to her guardian that the girl got so drunk that she could not return home.
Atim looked traumatised and wept uncontrollably as she narrated her ordeal. Her biggest worry is that she could have contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, since the man's wife is a confirmed member of The Aids Support Organisation in Katakwi district. "It still baffles me as to why my former class teacher and a former friend to my late mother could do such a thing to me," she says amidst sobs.
But Rev. Solomon Okolany of Ngariam, Atim's guardian, says he was away for burial with his wife and had left Atim to take care of his children only to find Atim missing that evening. But just as he woke up the following morning to start the search for Atim, Mangeri came to inform him that the girl had spent a night at her home after becoming drunk.
Initially, he says, he took the case to LCs but they advised him to report to the Police. According to Okolany, on learning that he had reported to the Police, Atim's molester took himself to another police station where he admitted having committed the crime but blamed it on alcohol.
Katakwi Police records indicate that Ekosile, a secondary school teacher of Magoro SS in Katakwi sexually abused Atim in December 2006 and that he admitted to committing the crime. "I thought I was sleeping with my wife," he told the Police in a statement.
Grace Akareut, the child and family protection officer at Katakwi Police Station, says Ekosile confessed right from the LC level up to the time of his arrest that he had defiled Atim, but claimed he did it under the influence of alcohol.
Akareut says Mangeri and her husband were arrested and detained for three days before being released on police bond. She adds that while Mangeri admits having called Atim to help her collect the food from the compound and that her husband committed the crime, she claims the crime was committed when she was asleep. Akareut, however, says Mangeri was charged with abetting defilement and faces a three-year jail term on conviction, while Ekosile faces a death sentence on conviction.
Akareut says Mangeri is a member of TASO. "She came here with her anti-retroviral drugs and we administered them to her for the period she was being detained. We have however, helped Atim to get an HIV test from Katakwi Hospital seven days she was defiled and she was found negative. We have been advised to go for a confirmatory test after three months," she says.
She regrets that whereas the law also provides that people who deliberately infect children with HIV be charged and convicted, if found with the virus, Atim's case may not go far because of the delays to get medical evidence.
A statement by the Child Protection Unit in Amuria and Katakwi districts shows that defilement is one of the most common forms of child abuse both in and outside homes. "In addition, the number of school dropouts is steadily increasing as well as the practice of adults deliberately infecting children with HIV and AIDS," it the statement goes on.
It is not clear why exactly Mangeri did force Atim into having sex with her husband, but what is clear is that their is strange, primitive, inhumane belief among some communities that having sex with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS.
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