My father raped me - Swazilandby James Hall She is pleasant, intelligent and attractive. A smile lights up her face when she is complimented on being so articulate. But it is obvious she is struggling to control the emotions battling within her as she tells her story. At 16, she has experienced the greatest betrayal of trust a child could ever know: to be raped and made pregnant by her own father! Thembi survived, and is now at Jacaranda House, a halfway house for violence survivors in Mbabane, Swaziland. She looks after other girls who have suffered similar ordeals, all of them bonded by terrible crimes committed against them. My mother died long ago. My father is alive but my guardians say he is not supposed to visit me. I would feel nervous if I met him. I don’t know how to express my feelings. I don’t know how to relate to ‘this thing’ that happened to me. Perhaps things will be clearer to me if and when I am able to think of him as my father again – not as this person who abused me. I feel detached when I think of him. Over time I might decide to see him again. I don’t know if he’ll be sorry. I wonder what he thinks or feels about what he did to me. He was sent to jail for a short while. I didn’t go to court because I was in hospital having the baby. I had a long and painful labour and when the nurses realised that a normal delivery was unlikely they took me to theatre. I recall the nurses, and later the doctor, urging me to push. But I was too weak, after 13 hours of labour. I went to the hospital at 2 a.m. When they took me to theatre it was 3 p.m. the next day. I was struggling to let the baby out all these hours. The whole thing was painful and exhausting. Afterwards I needed several days to recover. The baby was adopted. I first saw her in the delivery room. She looked like me, and not like my father. She was with me for two months and I breastfed her. I got used to her and was sad to see her go. I didn’t know the people who adopted my baby. The nurses from the mission said my baby would live in a nice home. I don’t want another baby. At least this is how I feel now. My mother died when I was two months old. She was over-drinking and developed a disease that killed her. I have a brother who is now 14. My stepmother left when I was 13, leaving me alone with my father. I was in grade seven when my father forced himself on me. We were alone at home and suddenly he asked me if I had slept with any one. He appeared very angry, and I had never seen him in such a mood. I was embarrassed to discuss such things with my father. To cover for my embarrassment I assured him in a light-hearted manner that I had not slept with any boy and he should know. He did know, because I was always at home. I did not have a boyfriend. I was smiling as he questioned me, and this seems to have made him angrier. At 14, naturally, I was developing breasts. “You have changed for me!” I still could not understand why he was angry or what he was implying. I tried to laugh it off. Then he started to beat me. I started to cry. He kept saying, “I have to see! I have to see!” He seemed deranged. I was confused, not knowing what he meant. He dragged me to his room, towards the bed. I was resisting, so he hit me again. He threw me onto the bed. He was in such a rage I thought he would kill me. He started tearing my clothes off. I was crying. He slapped me hard on the face. He put his fist into my mouth to stop me from screaming. Then he was on top of me. That is when I knew exactly what was happening. When he was through, suicide was the first thing that came to my mind. I would drink the pesticides used to spray crops on the farm. I believed there was nothing to live for. My father ordered me not to say anything to anyone or else he would kill me. He was still angry with me, as if what had happened was my fault. I didn’t have any friends to talk to. There were no relatives except my uncles, his brothers. I was afraid of them because they were always so grumpy. They didn’t like my father, and I assumed they didn’t like me either. Partly out of fear and partly out of a misplaced conviction that it would never happen again, I kept this rape ordeal to myself. I tried as much as possible to erase this ‘thing’ from my mind. After one year, it happened again. I came back from school one day and I knew it was going to happen. He was grumpy again. The donkeys had strayed into the garden, trampling the crops. He blamed me for this, even though I was at school, and he was at home. He said he had to punish me. He threw me on the bed and took off my clothes. Like the first time, he put his fist into my mouth so I could not scream or call for help. He was full of hate. This time I got pregnant. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. A nurse who was our neighbour noticed that my complexion was unusually clear and I had put on weight. She was concerned and advised that I go for a check-up. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I told her. Had my boyfriend ‘cheated’ me, she wanted to know. I felt very miserable, and memories of what my father had done to me came back to haunt me. “I don't have a boyfriend,” I told her as I started crying. She put one and one together and took me to the hospital the next day. I was pregnant. When I came home, my father wanted to know where I had been. I said I was at the neighbour’s. He knew I was lying. He had been there to ask for me! I was so afraid. Recalling the threats he made in the past, I ran to our neighbour’s house. My father did not chase after me. The next morning, some nurses accompanied me to the police station, following which my father was arrested. An official from the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAAGA) me to the halfway house.”
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