By Stephen V. Lansana
Sexual and Gender based violence is a serious and urgent concern in Sierra Leone.
Globally, Sierra Leone is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Regionally, the country has signed and domesticated the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and the Maputo Protocol.
These instruments protect and guarantee the rights of women in our society.
But the lack of popularization of these laws have created a knowledge gap in Sierra Leone thereby enabling perpetrators of violence and harassment against women to work freely.
Sexual Offences and domestic violence committed against women are compromised as a result of weak legislation and interference by relatives, friends and community elders.
According to the 2019 Sierra Leone Demographic Health Survey (SLDHS), an estimated 62 percent of women aged 15-49 reporting have experienced physical, or sexual violence.
Mariatu Sesay is a Sierra Leonean woman who is going through sexual and physical abuse in her marital home.
According to her, women are struggling in the country despite the enactment of Domestic Violence 2007 and the Sexual Offences Act 2012 [as amended]. She noted that in practice, the laws enshrined in these legislations are compromised which worsen the situation of women.
She said that women are like commodity in their home, adding that rape is common in marriage homes and mostly when they report the issue of marital rape to the Police, the society will frown at a woman who made such report.
According to AfroBarometer report 2022, a pan-African, non-partisan research network with regional and national partners across Africa, gender-based violence is a high priority in Sierra Leone, but citizens say a woman will be criticised, harassed, or shamed if she reports gender-based violence to the authorities.
“A majority (57%) of Sierra Leoneans say domestic violence should be treated as a private matter to be resolved within the family rather than as a criminal matter.”
“I am a Mende by tribe. In our culture, when a man go to pay the bride price for a woman, he will state it clear that he wants this woman for sex. And after the married, the man will have sex at any time he feels with or without the consent of his wife,” she said. “I am a victim of this situation.”
She explained that at one point [early 2022] when she attempted to report her husband for marital rape and physical and psychological abuse, her family members particularly her parents disowned her. “I am suffering in silence,” she cried. “I am not the only woman who is going through such treatment in the home. Many women are also going through rape, physical, mental, emotional and psychological abuse in the hands of their husbands.”
Yeanie Koroma, 40, is single mother with five children.
She said that she suffers consistent marital rape and physical abuse. “I reported my husband twice for marital rape to the police and to my family, but nothing was done. Instead, everyone was seeing me as a bad influence to our society,” she lamented.
She explained that her husband continuously abuse her and later left her. She added, “When we separated, my husband took the four eldest children from me, and I was left with a suckling child,” she said. “My husband refused to provide child support. I cared for her as a single mother. But five years later, he came and took away my child from me claiming that as a father, he has absolute rights over the child.”
She pointed out that when she reported the matter, she was told that the children belongs to their father, noting even her parents and relatives were against her when tried to take custody of her last child.