Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio took the bold step of declaring a national emergency over rape and sexual violence in 2019. Five years on, BBC Africa Eye explores whether survivors of attacks have received justice.
Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find disturbing.
In the town of Makeni, a three-hour drive east of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, a young mother sits outside her house with her 3-year-old daughter.
Anita (not her real name) describes the day in June 2023 when she found her little daughter with blood dripping from her diaper.
“I worked for a woman and that Saturday morning she asked me to go to the market,” she says, explaining that she then left her daughter with her employer and her 22-year-old son.
“He took my daughter. He said it was to buy her candy and cookies. It was a lie”.
When he returned from the market, he realized that the girl was missing. After searching for her, he found her, but her 22-year-old mother could see that the little girl was bleeding.
He took her to the hospital. Two rounds of stitches were done and it was confirmed that she had been raped.
“The nurses started checking on the girl and said, ‘Oh my God, what has this man done to this girl?’ The doctor who treated my daughter even cried.”
Anita went to the police, but the man fled and a year later the police have not been able to find him.
“The president created a law so that anyone who rapes children will be arrested and sent to jail,” She says angry because apparently nothing has been done.
It refers to a stricter law on sexual crimes created five years ago, after President Maada Bio declared a rape emergency.
“Take your hands off our daughters”
The move came after protests in December 2018, when hundreds of people dressed in white T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Keep Your Hands Off Our Daughters” marched through Freetown.
The news of another child rape had shocked the nation: a 5-year-old girl who was paralyzed from the waist down.
It was then reported that cases of sexual violence had almost doubled in a year and that a third affected children. The Sierra Leoneans were already tired.
The four-month state of emergency starting in February 2019 allowed the president to divert state resources to address sexual violence.
The updated Sexual Offenses Act introduced stricter penalties for sexual assaults.
Penalties for rape increased to a minimum of 15 years, or life imprisonment if it was a child.
The following year, a Model Sexual Offenses Court was established in Freetown to speed up trials.
There appears to have been some progress: reported cases of sexual and gender-based violence have fallen by almost 17%, from just over 12,000 in 2018 to just over 10,000 in 2023, according to police statistics.
Creating greater awareness and new structures is one thing, But making sure people like Anita’s daughter get justice is another matter..
The Rainbo Initiative is a national charity working with survivors of sexual violence. He points out that in 2022 only 5% of the 2,705 cases he handled reached the Supreme Court.
Lack of resources
One of the problems is the resources available to those who are supposed to enforce the law.
At the Makeni police station where Anita reported her daughter’s rape, Deputy Superintendent Abu Bakarr Kanu, who heads the Family Support Unit (FSU), says they receive around four cases of child sexual assault every week.
The big challenge his team faces is the lack of transportation to physically go to arrest the suspects.
It coordinates the seven police divisions in the region and none of them has a single vehicle.
“There are times when the suspect is reachable, but due to lack of vehicles it is not possible to go after him for arrest,” says Deputy Superintendent Kanu.
“Doing the right thing at the right time is a challenge.”
Like many in Sierra Leone, he was impressed with the government action that followed the state of emergency.
“We have enough… good laws and policies, but the structure and personnel are the challenge for us to comprehensively address the issues of sexual and gender-based violence in Sierra Leone.”
Even if an alleged perpetrator is apprehended, bringing him before a judge is an even bigger struggle.
In order for the case against a rape suspect to be tried, there is only one person in the country who can sign the documents: the attorney general.
The objective was to speed up the process and take cases directly to court, but a different bottleneck has been created.
“It is currently not possible for any other judicial official or lawyer to sign an indictment for sexual crimes”says State Attorney Joseph AK Sesay, a government-employed lawyer.
“The 2019 amendment stipulates that only the attorney general can properly sign an indictment. So that has posed a challenge in bringing the allegations to court.”
Information Minister Chernor Bah admits this is not a perfect process, but says It is “a process that we will continue to improve.”
Responding to the question that many believe little has changed when it comes to getting justice for rape survivors, she acknowledged that “in some communities people feel that way.”
But he rejects the idea that there has been no progress.
“I think the systemic reforms that we have implemented are there. The new laws are there. And I think those measures have achieved a general feeling that we are no longer in the dark days of 2019.”
For Anita, in Makeni, it has been almost a year since her young daughter was raped.
He has not received any new information from the police, so he resorted to posting the photo of the alleged suspect on Facebook.
“I want people to help me look for the young man. I am tormented and I am not happy. “I don’t want what happened to my daughter to happen to any other child.”
Beam click here to read more stories from BBC News World.
You can also follow us on Youtube, instagram, TikTok, x, Facebook and in our new whatsapp channelwhere you will find breaking news and our best content.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.
- “They were barbarians. “They took turns raping me”: the stark testimony of tortured women in Sudan
- The humiliating tradition of parading naked women as punishment in India