A baby is uncontrollably crying from inside the house but despite the loud cry, its mother, just a metre away from the house, cannot notice.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the baby has been crying for a while yet the mother remains unmoved as she is busy washing nappies.<\/p>\n
Just a few metres away, a mother notices the cry and she rushes to pick up the baby.<\/p>\n
This somehow summarises the daily hardships of a 14-year-old girl from the Northern Region of Malawi. Circumstances have forced her to drop out of school to look after her child. She has become a mother at just 14.<\/p>\n
The girl is both hearing and speech impaired. The only way of communication is through sign language. She can hardly hear her child crying and she relies on her mother to provide support all the time.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s mother, Maria (not real name), is 65 years old. She makes sure to be within the surrounding to support the daughter who is a mother to a two months old baby.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe girl was defiled by a man who already has 11 children who took advantage of her condition. We gather the man forced her to sleep with him on three different occasions threatening to kill her if she revealed what was going on. Due to her age, she succumbed to pressure,\u201d narrates Maria.<\/p>\n
The situation has left Maria helpless as she spends more time looking after both the girl and her son. Maria neither has the opportunity nor time to engage in any activity that can bring income to her family.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s story has brought about frustration to the members of the community. Apart from the girl and her son, Maria also takes care of four grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gather the man who defiled her enticed her with K200 on the first encounter and did so again during the second meeting and finally gave the girl K100 during the last meeting. We came to know about this after we noticed she was pregnant. When we asked her about the one responsible, she repeatedly pointed at one of our neigbhours\u2019 house who we always believed was supposed to treat the girl as her own daughter,\u201d Maria says.<\/p>\n
The girl was in Standard 5 at one of the schools in the Northern Region district. The school provides boarding facilities to all learners as a security measure. While the school is for free, learners are required to make a contribution of K10,000 per term towards food.<\/p>\n
Maria could not raise this amount of money hence the daughter temporarily dropped out of school and it was during this time that she met her fate.<\/p>\n
A local non-governmental organisation learnt about the girl\u2019s story and followed up on it. The culprit has since been handed a 12-year prison sentence for defilement.<\/p>\n
While this seems to be a victory worth celebrating, the local NGO says the battle is far from over as there are more girls who are in a similar situation whose stories are not told.<\/p>\n
Through a joint operation with community members, the local NGO has been able to rescue about 400 girls from either early marriages or pregnancy and it is currently supporting 73 girls who have gone back to school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying our best to give these girls a second chance but the problem is that more girls continue getting married or getting pregnant. The sad thing is that very few men are brought to book for either impregnating a minor or marrying minors. We believe stiffer punishments would deter would-be offenders,\u201d says an executive director for the local NGO.<\/p>\n
While the country has laws and stiffer punishment for defilement, the executive director wonders why most men who impregnate girls get away with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been taking these cases to court but the police rarely act save for the issue to do with this girl maybe because this was a special needs case. Suspects are usually released because law enforcers have failed to ascertain if the suspect was responsible or not,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In an interview, one of the senior police officers, who did not want to be named, says it is not easy to arrest someone for impregnating a child because impregnating alone is not mentioned in criminal law but civil law hence the appropriate charge would be defilement.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill there is an issue of proof. The evidence will largely depend on testimonies because the DNA test may be expensive in Malawi and this is the reason most people get away with it,\u201d says the officer.<\/p>\n
Lilongwe based legal expert and rights activist, Chrispin Sibande, says someone can be taken to court for impregnating a child who is less than 16 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsent is irrelevant. Pregnancy is evidence of sex. A person can be charged of defilement. In the absence of a DNA or medical test testimonies or say circumstantial evidence must be able to prove the case,\u201d Sibande says.<\/p>\n
The local NGO is in partnership with the Adventist Health Services with funding from UK Aid and DfID through Christian Aid is implementing a three-year year project focusing on improving maternal and neonatal health. One of the initiatives is to eliminate early marriages and pregnancy which are a contributing factor to maternal deaths among other complications. – By Suzgo Chitete, contributor<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n NOTE: The names of the victim and the local non governmental organisation have been concealed to avoid leads to the identity of the victim.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A baby is uncontrollably crying from inside the house but despite the loud cry, its mother, just a metre away from the house, cannot notice. Apparently, the baby has been crying for a while yet the mother remains unmoved as she is busy washing nappies. Just a few metres away, a mother notices the cry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62436,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44079\/revisions\/62436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}