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Shock as children are tortured by parents in Masaka, Entebbe
A police officer at Entebbe Police Station shows Angel Nalubega’s wounds inflicted on her by her mother. Photo by Martin Ssebuyira
What you need to know:
Kennedy Sseruwooza is nursing wounds due to severe beating from her aunt while Angel Nalubega is burnt with a rod by her mother.
Two children in Masaka and Entebbe districts are nursing injuries inflicted on them by their caretakers in two separate incidents of child abuse. In Masaka, Kennedy Sseruwooza, 11, is lying in Ward Six at Masaka Regional Referral Hospital, recovering from the wounds inflicted on him by his aunt who tied him with ropes for two days.
The aunt, a resident of Kabanda Village in Kyannamukaka Village, Masaka District, accused the boy of absenting himself for three days from home and going to work at a sugar plantation in the same village.
When Daily Monitor visited Sseruwooza in hospital, it found he had sustained many wounds allover his body due to the beating. According to Mr Augustine Lukwago, the area chairperson, Sseruwooza’s mother is dead and his father is said to be living in Kampala.
Mr Lukwago brought Sseruwooza’s plight to the attention of the child protection unit of Kitovu Mobile Home Care, an NGO under Masaka Diocese, which took him to hospital where he has been receiving medical attention for more than a week.
The case has been reported at Masaka Police Station where the aunt has made a statement as she attends to the boy at the hospital. In Entebbe, Angel Nalubega, a seven-year-old Primary One pupil at Nkumba Christian Primary School may spend several days out of school as she nurses wounds inflicted by her mother after losing Shs10, 000 meant for airtime.
Her 24-year old mother, now in police custody, tied her arms and used a burning wire to melt it all over her body as she demanded Nalubega to produce the money.
“I hadn’t gone to school on Independence Day when our housemaid sent me to buy airtime worth Shs5,000 with a Shs10,000 note but I don’t know where I left it upon reaching the shop,” a sobbing Nalubega narrates to officers at Entebbe Police Station.
After a few strokes of the cane yielding no fruit, her mother then tied Nalubega’s hands and lit a wire which started melting on her body.
No mercy
“I cried out to mum to forgive me but in vain until she saw me bleeding heavily,” she recounts.
However, Nalubega is now appealing to police officers to forgive her mother, apparently in police cells with a seven months old baby.
Nalubega’s mother, who is a nurse, is also seeking for pardon so as to return home and nurse her daughter’s wounds.
This has left police in dilemma since the law provides for charging her with child abuse. The head of police’s Family and Protection Unit, Ms Dinah Night Ampeirwe, said the suspect faces charges of child abuse.
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The Rising Trend
Raising Voices, a non-governmental organisation working to prevent violence against women and children in Uganda, says the most common form of violence against children is physical where children are battered, burnt using hot water or charcoal and in some instances, tied using ropes as a way of punishing them.
