Rising incest
District leaders and human rights activists in Wakiso district have expressed concern at the alarming rates of incest involving teenage girls since the closure of schools.
Incest refers to sexual relations between close relatives like a parent to child, brother and sister, uncle/aunt with nephew or niece.
With the onset of COVID-19, incest has become a prominent issue in families with children becoming silent victims and majority teenage pregnancies being linked to the vice.
Jane Kansiime, a counsellor at Wakisa Ministries, a pregnancy crisis centre in Buyera Wakiso district, says they have received over 50 reported cases of girls who have been sexually abused by their fathers, uncles and nephews.
Kansiime says in some instances, these cases go unreported because mothers conceal such incidents for fear of embarrassing their families in public.
In other cases, Kansiime says some family members deliberately neglect acts of incest and leave the victims traumatized.
She cites an incident where a father molested all his four daughters and the stepmother kept quiet on the matter.
“We had a father who was using his girls sexually and these girls would run to the stepmother to report, but because this person (the father) infected her with HIV, she saw it as her time to revenge. She didn’t care. She told them since he is the father and they are women, they should satisfy him.”
She attributes an increase in incest to parents sharing the same living space with children, access to pornography among others.
“They have poor living spaces, you find like five children in the same space living together and next door it is the parents having sex in the night so they tend to practice what they see. Even exposure to pornography; these kids are going to start acting out what they watch, and they are doing it with their close relatives and some are of the same age or other times with threats from older relatives,” Asiimwe explains.
Joanitah Mukalazi, the Wakiso District Probation Officer, says that most of the incest cases can only be revealed with pregnancies especially from fathers and stepfathers.
Rising incest
Mukalazi says the vice equally affects boys.
“Men at times are blamed for the vice since results of the actions can be revealed in pregnancy, but many boys are also sexually abused by female relatives and mothers,” he says.
Under section 149 of the Penal Code Act, incest is a criminal offence that is punishable with imprisonment of up to seven years. When the victim is below 18 years of age, the perpetrator is liable to life imprisonment, if found guilty.
