Fury

At the hospital this week there is a patient on peds with nothing physically wrong with her. Her parents brought her to the hospital as she has been trembling, listless, silent and generally not herself for a week. They were thinking cerebral malaria, maybe typhoid. But, all the tests were negative. Olen saw her on rounds after seeing all the negative test results. He asked this 14 year old if she had ever been raped. She said no, but in such a way that he wrote for an ultrasound. She didn’t need an ultrasound, but she needed a private space to speak with a woman, and this was the way to make it happen without alerting anyone in her family, or any of the other patients, that something was going on.

The penalty for rape in Bere seems to be more focused on the woman:
Why were you alone?
Why were you wearing a sleeveless shirt?
Why did you let him see your knees?
Why did you flirt with him, encourage him?
Why did you bring shame on your family?
What are you going to do now that you are “no good” for marriage and thus have no value to the family?

The punishment for a rapist? A week, maybe 2 in the local jail before his family can raise enough money to bribe his way out. I’ve never heard of a rapist accused of bringing shame on his family. He was either under the influence of witchcraft (thus, not his fault), a sluty woman (thus, not his fault) or unable to control his natural, manly urges (thus, not his fault).

The girl in the hospital, all of 14 years of age finally admitted to having been raped. The girl was afraid that if she did tell her mother she would be punished for having been sexually assaulted. Danae finally convinced the girl to tell her mom, and her mom was able to cry with her, hold her hand and tell her that she would protect her as best she could. This meager result is the best possible outcome. There are no child psychologists, no culture that would encourage talk-therapy, that would allow rage in a woman. After a week, the girl was discharged into the care of her family. There was little more that we could do.

Not too long after that, I was home alone when one of the normally boisterous and mouthy young girls on my compound came to me dragging one of the toddlers in tow. They were acting oddly. The little one squirmy and crying, inconsolable, the older girl silent and sullen. After an hour of sitting and asking questions, the older girl finally told me what had happened. Essentially, a 30 year old man, had found the 13 year old and her 3 year old charge walking through the field behind our house. He grabbed her and apparently described in detail what he planned to do. He called her ugly names and told her she was “asking for it.” He, probably because he’d had too much to drink, couldn’t manage to hold them both down and take his own clothes off at the same time, and they escaped.

I was shaking with anger. I asked his name, where he lived, hatched elaborate plans that involved dull knives and amputations.

She made me promise not to tell. “I will get into too much trouble,” she said. “They will think it is my fault because I have a big mouth.” I told her that we had to tell, that I couldn’t protect her. I didn’t know how. She told me she would hide bricks on the route so that if it happened again she could hit him with one. I had to consciously stop myself from grabbing her, shaking her, telling her that she shouldn’t have to think about that kind of thing. I told her over and over that she had done nothing wrong, that she was just a little girl and that the person at fault was the man.

When Tuka came home a few hours later, I had convinced the girl that it was okay for me to tell what had happened. The women and girls in the family then all sat together and told their stories of when they had been threatened, hurt or abused by men: by their neighbors, friends, husbands. In a way it was good, this unburdening, as no one felt quite as alone. But the horror of the stories, kept quiet for so long, accepted as a normal part of growing up, left me feeling raw.

I wish I could say that there was some happy fix that came out of it. But all that really happened was that the more I talked with friends and neighbors about sexual violence, the more stories I heard. I know that the instance of sexual violence against women is not a problem unique to Chad. I have nothing profound or helpful to say about it all.

All I have is fury.