Women begin using law to lock away rapists in Liberia

Revised penalties may turn the tide

August 14, 2007|Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press

MONROVIA, Liberia -- Under an old foam mattress in one of this city's slums, Niome David keeps a dark memento -- the underwear her 9-year-old daughter was wearing the night she was raped.

The mother refuses to wash out the bloodstain, keeping it as proof of the brutality her child endured. In a nation inured to violence, the fact that she knew to preserve evidence is also, somehow, a sign of hope.

After 14 years of civil war, many have become accustomed to covering up their horrors in shallow graves -- including David, whose husband was executed during the war and whom she buried on a roadside. But an 18-month-old law is encouraging women to turn to the courts, which can lock convicted rapists away for life.

When her daughter came home bleeding, David -- an illiterate woman who sells rice from a platter she carries on her head -- knew to undress her, but not to wash her. The blood had soaked through the child's pink dress.

A radio and billboard campaign instructs women to seek immediate medical care for rape, so David held her daughter and wept, then folded her clothes into a plastic bag and took her to the capital's main rape clinic.

Liberia does not have the technology to store semen samples, so a nurse recorded each laceration on paper. That and the bloodied clothes helped persuade a jury this year to convict Musa Solomon Fallah, a 43-year-old car mechanic, who was sentenced to life in prison. "That man spoil my daughter," said David. "I hope he dies in jail."

Convicted April 11, Fallah is one of the first rapists to receive the maximum punishment under the country's revised penal code, a turning point in what people here are calling a war on rape. The new law, passed Dec. 29, 2005, and considered one of the toughest in the region, eliminates bail in gang and statutory rape offenses. Before, even a man who raped a toddler could be bailed out for as little as $25 and stood a good chance of eventually walking free.

Across Africa, from Sierra Leone to Sudan, rape has been a weapon of war used by militiamen, rebels, and government armies.

In many places, the problem has been acknowledged and even highlighted by humanitarian agencies and rights groups, but in most cases little has been done to stop it.

The UN says the level of sexual violence in Congo and Burundi is appalling, but lack of education, resources, and honest justice systems made such crimes hard to curb.

Liberia stands in contrast. It has Africa's only elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has sought to dispel the stigma associated with sexual assault by publicly acknowledging that she was the victim of attempted rape during the war.

Rape was so prevalent during the civil war that many have come to see it as a petty offense compared with other atrocities common during the conflict.