Most of the girls, who lived on streets in Kigali and now under rehabilitation at Marembo Center reveal that some ‘respectable’ men would take advantage of their homelessness and forced them to have sex, giving them some money, buying them into secrecy. Many under-world-like stories. “One man would come on the streets under the cover of the night, pick about ten girls, defile them in one night and dump them back on the streets in the morning. Others could take some girls and have sex with them for a week, and then dump them back on the streets,” goes one of the narrations.
IGIHE writer met some of the victims as she visited Marembo Centre that caters for sexually abused girls under the age of eighteen. The Centre is located in Ndera Sector of Gasabo District in Kigali.
Ten girls sexually abused by one man
Yvette Uwase (not real names) is 16 years old. She was born in Rwamagana District and started living street life when she was 14 when someone brought her to Kigali and abandoned her at Nyabugogo Bus Park.
With no relative or acquaintance in Kigali City, Uwase remained with no other choice, she started living in Nyabugogo River Swamp with other street boys and girls.
With tears flowing down her cheeks, Uwase says she started being sexually abused at the age of fourteen to get a livelihood. She is now approximately six months pregnant and medical tests proved she is HIV positive.
“I lived in Nyabugogo Swamp with other ten young girls. There is a man who frequently came to us during night hours. He, at first, bought us food and paid taxi moto fees for us to his house. He had sex with us all night and let us go back in the morning. Sometimes, we would spend a week at his home,” recounts Uwase with an overpowering tinge of sadness.
Uwase says this man lives in a nice house in a fence and he was apparently a civilized and rich man. He took them to his house in the night that no neighbor would see them.
“When we reached his home, he gave us water and soap to take shower and he had sex with one after the other. Those whom I know we went together are ten. I personally went to his house five times. We are not the only ones who went there; there are others. Every time we went to his home, he gave each of us Rwf5,000 and hence we chose not to reveal that to anybody else,” Uwase adds.
Of the ten girls said to have been defiled by the “shadow-man”, three are now at Marembo Centre. They are pregnant and all are infected with HIV/AIDS.
Shockingly, among the girls our reporter met at the Centre, is an eight-year-old, infected with HIV/AIDS.
“We told him [the suspected defiler] to use condoms but he refused and tore it in parts. He said he would not pay money to the one who would refuse to have sex with him. He promised more money to the one who accepted to do unprotected sex. If we complained that we might get impregnated, he told us that he knew he can’t impregnate a woman.”
The victims accepted to sell their bodies for money to get food and clothes but also the suspect told them there was a planned operation to arrest street children and that he wanted to give them accommodation.
The victims at Marembo Centre who talked to our reporter can vividly remember the residence of the man they accuse of having sexually abused them. The man who ruined the lives of the young girls was never brought to justice.
Dead trying out abortions
When some street girls discover that they are pregnant, they try to carry out abortions which result into deaths for some.
“Some try to abort using traditional ointments and herbs while others use Glycerin jerry. Some also die as they try to abort,” reveals one girl.
Marembo Centre is home to sexually abused girls who were raped.
The abuse results in young girls’ trauma, depression and loss of confidence but the Director of Marembo Centre, Nicolette Nsabimana, says that at the Centre, hope for a good life is restored.
“Street girls are not raped or impregnated by their fellow street boys. They are impregnated by older men who are rich and respected. Some girls tell us that they are taken by men who come in cars and they go to defile them from their good houses where they live. Rwandans should all together stand up to take a role in the fight against this issue,” Nsabimana says.
Statistics by Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) indicate that Rwanda’s judiciary received 1,591 child defilement cases in 2016, increased to 2,080 in 2017 and 1,727 in 2018.
Another report by Rwanda Public Prosecution Authority shows that defilement case files submitted for prosecution increased from 1,819 in 2013/14 to 1,879 in 2014/15, reached 1,917 files in 2015/16, to 2086 in 2016/17 and 2,996 in 2017/18.
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