In the mind of an abused woman

Faridah looks older than her 48 years of age. She is frail and too timid to hold your gaze when she speaks to you, so she keeps her head lowered. She is one of the women being rehabilitated at the recently commissioned Gender Based Violence (GBV) shelter in Kamuli District. In Lusoga, she shared her experience.

“I’m a farmer and resident of Bulopa village in Kamuli District. My mother died when I was still a young girl, leaving the burden of caring for my eight siblings to me since I’m the oldest. I got married at 29 when my siblings were all old enough to take care of themselves. My husband abused me for a long time, but I’d rather not reveal his identity so as to protect his esteem among his peers.

I got married to a man who already had a wife but this didn’t bother me because a Muslim man can marry up to four wives. Rather than build me a separate house, he told me, about a year into our marriage, that I should buy land and construct my own house if I was not comfortable living with my co-wife.

Becoming the man in the house
I saved up enough money from selling my produce and bought myself land where I constructed a two-roomed house and my husband moved in with the children and I. He, however, asked me to register the land in his name. This gave him the liberty to sell some whenever he wanted.

When it was time for the children to start school, he refused to pay their school fees. My mother-in-law only laughed at my concern and told me to let her son be. I started selling smoked fish and offering to dig for other people to make some extra money. With my husband hardly doing anything to contribute to our family but hanging out with his friends, I assumed full family responsibility.

In addition to this, he often beat me for the slightest mistakes. Whenever I threatened to report him to the authorities, my neighbours discouraged me, saying he would be arrested and we would be left with no protection. With 10 children, I heed their advice and I endured the pain of his beatings hoping he would one day reform. Had I not had children yet, I would have left.

The beatings
The first time he beat me was for selling maize to buy a jerry can and a blanket. Then, we were five years into our marriage and my husband had joined a bad group of friends with whom they spent their days gambling.

We had two children and did not have a blanket or a bed. My husband had hoped to use the money himself, but was disappointed to find a new jerry can and blanket at home. That first time he beat me, I ran back to my father’s house for rescue. A day later, he came home and apologised to my father. Daddy told him to treat the wounds and sent me back, since he had apologised. I went back, especially because of my children.

I also mentally resolved that I would not be intimate with him again until he got a bed. When he figured this out, he beat me again for denying him his conjugal rights and reminded me that my father had not sent me off to him with a bed. Again, I rushed off to my father who, again sent me back with the advice to endure and do as my husband demanded.

From then on, the beatings continued, even in the open away from home. Once, he beat me so badly for buying myself a dress for Christmas. I almost collapsed. This baffled me because it was my money and I was the one providing for the family.

Defiling our daughter
The last blow was in August 2011 when he defiled our nine-year-old daughter. In the middle of the night, I heard our daughter crying only to find him naked on top of her. I made an alarm and hid his trouser so he could be caught naked as evidence.

I then called the female Local Council (LC1) representative who also found him naked. With the help of the LCs, I reported the case to the police and the child was treated. He threw me out with the children and changed the padlock. Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET) took up the case and gave me forms to take to the village and fill them.

On my way to the village to deliver the forms to the LCs, he chased us away and even denied paternity of our daughter. He followed her to the garden and cut her shoulder with a hoe. With UWONET’s help, we rented elsewhere and received constant counselling at UWONET’s advisory centre as the shelter was not yet constructed. UWONET later brought him on board and counselled him about his past behaviour. He recently apologised to me and is trying to make up by befriending the children. I am positive we will reconcile and move in together again because he seems remorseful.”

WHY DO VICTIMS STAY?

Amid torture, many women stay and even feel the need to continue protecting their abusive spouses. Stephen Langa, a counsellor at Family Life Network, says just like an addict, there are always those people who defend the abuser.

The counsellor says their reasons normally rotate around social and economic factors, and the children. “In most cases, they fear to leave and stay alone with a concern of who will provide or protect them.

Langa, however, says in most cases the fear to raise their children without a father figure supersedes everything. He says children can keep a bad marriage going.
“The desire to maintain a status quo being “Mrs” also makes some women stay,” he says. Langa explains that some women stay because they feel that if they leave, they will lose that privilege of being called somebody’s wife.

The other is the fear of public judgment and viewing them as failures. “There is a belief that people shouldn’t wash their dirty linen in public, so, they quietly endure the abuse.

Also questions such as what will people say, make them stay,” he says adding that they therefore stay to protect their image.
In his observation, Langa says the worst is that most abusers mistreat their partners when their children are watching so when the children grow up, they side with the mother and take her to their homes hence leaving the father alone. In loneliness, he suffers since he can hardly cook for himself hence dying early.

If experiencing violence, Langa advises that you get help from the first line of defence who in this case should be your best man then to those who married you (church or mosque) and finally to both your partner’s and your relatives.
“But if the abuse is threatening your life, for goodness’ sake get out of there and get help while out of the relationship,” he says.

-As told to Lydia Ainomugisha