Child Sex Abuse Within the Family in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Change in Current Legal and Mental Health Responses

摘要

The struggle against incest in Africa takes place within enormous constraints, but this is not cause to despair. Although the story of the abused girls described in the Introduction recounted failure and trauma in their contacts with the legal system, several things were particularly impressive about the long New York Times article. First, it was on the front page of a weekday edition of a major newspaper, was given a great deal of space, and was extremely well-researched, containing many insights that appear in this Article. Second, the fact that the Article appeared at all means that people are noticing this issue not only in Africa but internationally; most of the previous media coverage had been limited to commercial sex trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Both of these, of course, are integrally connected to child sex abuse, but they may eclipse abuse as a separate problem. What was most impressive about the reporting, however, was the description of these girls' mothers, who immediately believed their daughters and went to great lengths to get them appropriate care. They were willing to go public, using their daughters' and their own names and pictures, saying that "[e]verybody should be aware that things like this should not happen to children." The reporter who interviewed the mothers described them as "[p]assionate about the need for justice for their daughter[s]." Yet another sign of hope appears in the story of one Zambian woman who was repeatedly raped by her father for a decade, but grew up to write a book about her experience and to establish a foundation to help other child victims like her.