The plight of a teen mother born from a single mother: devastating effects of sexual abuse

It is like a horror movie that when it is aired on professional TV is labelled “prohibited for children under 10”, and even the adult watches it groaning and shedding tears in the eyes unless they are hard-hearted. But it is not a fiction, it is a real-life story of Mukandutiye (name changed for safety reason) who went through a traumatizing life experience from early childhood after being born from a single mother. She recalls what happened at her grand-parents’ home when she was seven years old.
“My mother gave birth to me as a single mother while she was staying with her parents. She was harassed for that until she was forced to go away leaving me in the hands of my grandparents. My mother got illegally married to another man in Byimana” said Mukandutiye.
Things got worse for Mukandutiye as her grand-parents got more and more tired of shouldering her basic needs including foods and she had no choice other that joining her mother at all cost.
“Whenever it was time for taking meals, I was told that as a child of single mother who left me behind, I had no right to the food. One day, when they told me to go collecting forage for the domestic animals, I decided to go in the search of mother”
The teen walked a long journey asking in the direction of the place she was told her mother could be living. On the way whether she asked everyone she met whether they could know the whereabouts of her mother. In what she described as a miracle, she asked a man who was her mother’s new husband.
“As I reached a business centre, I asked a man that I chose randomly. I told him my mother’s name and asked him whether she could know where she is. Surprisingly the man was my mother’s husband. She took me home where I met my mother who got shocked upon seeing me”
But what she thought was going to be the end of her stressful life experience turned out to be more traumatizing instead. Her new hosts got hostile as her mother’s husband openly said that she could not take care of someone else child. Mukandutiye left the family and joined an old woman who accepted her upon listening to her ordeal. At 14 years, Mukandutiye decided to go to Kigali to look for a job as a housemaid. Within two years into her life in Kigali she experienced the most traumatizing experience of her life.
“One day, while my boss’s wife was at work, my boss unexpectedly asked me to stop washing the kitchen utensils and go make their bed. I had to obey him as he insisted. When I entered their bedroom, he followed me in and locked the door behind him. In that moment, my heart raced with fear and confusion. I was just a child—only 16 years old. He raped me. Afterward, he threatened me: “If you tell anyone, I will kill you.”
Months later, Mukandutiye realized that she was pregnant.
Campaigns aimed at tackling sexual abuse emphasize on the need to report cases as early as possible in order to allow for the collection of evidence. But due to ignorance and threat from her boss, Mukandutiye broke the silence about her ordeal months later.
“I reported the case to the Rwanda Investigation Bureau long after it had happened. But when the investigators went to the place where I had been assaulted, they asked about the man I had known only as Papa Zouzou. The people there claimed they didn’t know who he was.”
Mukandutiye delivered while back in her home village, where she struggled to live alongside her mother, who had returned to live as a single mother after a failed marriage. She is being supported by a local non-government organization that is striving to rebuild the life of single and teen mothers.
Tuyisenge Claudette, the coordinator of Inshuti Nyanshuti NGO said that sexual abuse is a serious issue but is hopeful that it will be dealt with as the government has put in place serious measures to deal with it.
“In the past when you reported a case of sexual abuse local authorities would tell you, please we have other serious priorities to focus on we cannot get enough time to deal with those girls who cannot take care of themselves. But today, when you report such a case it is given all due attention and in time. There remains an issue with some who do not report cases early enough to allow for proper investigation”
Mukandutiye hopes that the support that she is getting and the regained hope of life will help her through both physically and emotionally.
According to the Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey 2019-20 from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda and the Ministry of Health, 45 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence: 23 percent have experienced only physical violence, 9 percent have experienced only sexual violence, and 14 percent have experienced both physical and sexual violence.
According to the same report the number of teen pregnancies increased from 17,337 in 2017 to 19,832 in 2020.