At 24, a single mother, Marie — not her real name — could have expected a better deal in life. But she was given no choice: while working as a housemaid in Kinindo, a residential suburb of the capital, Bujumbura, Marie was raped and subsequently found herself pregnant.
Like many other girls who get pregnant in Burundi, including those who do as a consequence of being raped, Marie would not have even dreamed of seeking an abortion, not least because abortion is prohibited here.
However, her plight could have been even worse, in that she was lucky not to have been infected with HIV or some other sexually transmitted disease (STD). In a recent presentation on medical care for rape victims Dr Trihonie Ndikumana, a gynaecologist at Bujumbura’s University Hospital, said that in cases of rape, the risks for victims of contracting an STD were very high: 30% for hepatitis B, 3% for hepatitis C and 0.3% for HIV/Aids.
However, if such women obtain medical treatment early enough after the event, protective measures against HIV can be successful.
“We can give them anti-retroviral treatment to block the transmission of the virus in the blood, but for that, victims must consult four hours after the rape, or 72 hours to the maximum,” Ndikumana said.
Moreover, victims could also avert pregnancy by receiving emergency contraceptive pills.
However, in spite of the availability of these prophylactic measures, many cases of rape go unreported. Lucie Nyamarushwa, a human rights coordinator with the Iteka rights group, attributes this to victims’ ignorance of their rights and the procedures available to prosecute perpetrators.
However, for Dieudonné Nsanzamahoro, the psychologist in charge of the Fight Against Rape project being administered by Nturengaho, an NGO specialising in the care of rape victims, the reasons are more complex.
“Victims hide the crime in shame, because it has not only psychological implications for the victim herself but also social consequences. Society has such a bad conception of rape that it puts the blame on the victim and not the perpetrator,” he said.
Instead of receiving the sympathy and help that their misfortune cries out for, victims are usually accused of having tempted the perpetrators, and therefore deserve their fate. “For fear of being termed of having loose morals, many prefer to hide away what they consider their shame,” Nsanzamahoro said.
Regardless of the consequences of the rape for the victim, Marie’s parents generally tended to advise her to keep the matter to herself and, particularly in the event of her being young, they feared that if it became known no man would ever marry her, he added.
Moreover, this misconception was damaging to the victim’s fragile equilibrium, instilling in her a misplaced sense of guilt. Not only that, but, depending on her personality, a woman who had been raped might lose her self-esteem, appetite, or sexual drive, and even attempt suicide.
However, with psychological assistance, victims could be helped to regain their self-confidence and express their anger against the perpetrators instead of turning in on themselves, Nsanzamahoro said.
But social attitudes remained a serious problem in this context, he said: girls who had been raped were chased out of their schools, stigmatised by their peers, and those found pregnant were then rejected by their families. Nsanzamahoro also cited the case of a man in the eastern province of Ruyigi who divorced his wife after she was raped.
He also cited a case to illustrate the difficulties encountered by rape victims in seeking justice.
“At Kabezi in Rural Bujumbura, a raped woman reported the crime to the local elders, this being a necessary preliminary to instituting legal proceedings. The elders told her to keep quiet, because such things could not be discussed in public. She was so ashamed that she came to us, but that was three weeks after the event, so past the deadline for successful prophylactic treatment,” Nsanzamahoro said.
According to Marjorie Niyungeko, the chairwoman of the Burundi Women Lawyers’ Association, Burundian society regards anything related to sex as taboo. This attitude served to discourage rape victims from taking legal proceedings to such a degree that by the time they finally decided to go ahead it was usually too late to obtain the relevant evidence, she said.
Burundi law, on the other hand, does contain provisions to protect victims.
“The law punishes a man guilty of attempted rape with between six months and five years of imprisonment. In the event of the victim being under 18 years old, the sentence can be as long as 20 years, if the perpetrator resorted to threat ” Niyungeko said.
“However, judges, like the rest of society, do not regard rape as a serious crime to be severely punished, and therefore tend to treat offenders leniently. This has the effect of discouraging victims from taking legal proceedings, knowing they are unlikely to succeed,” she added.
Niyungeko therefore believes that there is a need for a nationwide campaign to instil into society the serious nature of the crime of rape. For his part, Nsanzamahoro is calling for a national crusade against rape.
The crime, meanwhile, is on the increase in Burundi. Figures made available by Nturengaho singled out the provinces of Muramvya, Ruyigi and Bujumbura as the most affected, with 91 cases registered in Ruyigi from April to November 2003, 60 cases in Muramvya from June to November, and 86 cases in Bujumbura from January to August 2003
Nsanzamahoro attributed the rise in the number of cases to the civil war. “Men always want to dominate, but in times of war, they accumulate different frustrations. They therefore rape not to satisfy their sexual needs but as a means of expressing their frustrations,” he said.
Another contributory factor to the rise, he added, was the strong but wrong belief that having sexual intercourse with very young girls could cure HIV-positive men.
“This may explain why the majority of rape victims are children under 18, even in one case involving a two-year-old girl.”
Inquiries made by Nturengaho and Iteka found that government soldiers and rebel combatants were responsible for most of the cases. — Irin