Why sexual abuse mostly goes unreported in Africa

KINSHASA (DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO)
La Croix International [France]

April 20, 2022

By Lucie Sarr

Exclusive interview with Sister Josée Ngalula, internationally recognized theologian who has spent the past 20 years offering pastoral assistance to sex abuse victims in Africa

St. Andrew’s Sister Josée Ngalula says there are at least “eight main reasons” why it is difficult for people in Africa to denounce sexual abuse, mostly due to cultural norms on the vast continent.

The 62-year-old Congolese religious sister last year became the first African woman ever to be named a member of the International Theological Commission (ITC), a body under the aegis of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Sister Josée teaches dogmatic theology at several theological institutes in Africa. And she has also spent the past 20 years providing pastoral assistance to sex abuse victims and the institutions that support them.

She has just compiled a report based on her work in this area. She spoke about it in this exclusive interview with La Croix Africa’s Lucie Sarr.

La Croix Africa: A survey by La Croix Africa revealed the difficulty for victims in Africa when it comes to reporting sexual abuse in families and in churches. You recently gave a conference based on 20 years of studies that you’ve conducted among victims of sexual abuse and the institutions that support them. And you mention the main reasons why victims and witnesses of sexual abuse refuse to testify. Who is this report intended for and what is its objective?

Sister Josée Ngalula: This report was made at the request of ecclesial institutions that are anxious to make use of existing expertise in order to better help the Church in its accompaniment of victims of sexual abuse in families, society, parishes and other ecclesial structures.

According to this report, what are the reasons for refusing to testify?

There are 8 main reasons why victims and witnesses of sexual abuse committed in Africa – mainly in rural areas by people in positions of authority – are blocked when it comes to denouncing the abusers.

It is important to bring them up in order to find solutions that make it possible for them to testify in peace and security.

One of the reasons is that the issue of virginity brings about a fear of speaking out.

Indeed, from a cultural point of view, the virginity of a young girl is still a sacred value, especially in rural areas.

Therefore, a girl from a strict Christian or religious family who loses her virginity is stigmatized, and one does not even ask under what circumstances this happened. She is automatically considered “soiled”.

Because of this, some congregations systematically chase away a nun when they learn that she has lost her virginity.

And this brings about a great fear in them: to go and report that one has been a victim of touching or rape is to let society hear that one has lost one’s virginity.

For fear of being stigmatized and chased away from the family (for the young girl), or from the convent (for nuns who are victims of sexual abuse), they do not come forward and they suffer in silence.

Conversely, abusers who are perverts choose to rape these categories of young girls and women who are frightened in this way, because they are very sure that their victims will never denounce them for fear of being chased away from the family or the convent.

This leads to the conclusion that the abusers will continue to commit sexual crimes with impunity because at the time of the trial they will be exonerated due to the lack of testimony from the victim herself.

But abusers need to know that this will not work anymore: various authorities are already aware of this and have taken measures to find evidence other than oral testimony from the victims.

But the same situations also happen to married women…

Yes, because often, in our societies, being raped is equated with adultery. A married woman who is a victim of rape is automatically repudiated, even if there is objective proof that she was really a victim (in a war situation for example).

As a result, married women who are sexually abused do not come forward, for fear of being repudiated and despised by their own families.

As a result, abusers who are perverts choose to rape married women to ensure that they will not be denounced.

However, the various authorities are well aware today: abusers will no longer be at all exonerated because a wide-ranging initiative has been carried out in several dioceses so that the victim is called a victim and is protected: abusers will no longer be exonerated.

Your report underlines that tribal and ethnic issues are sometimes instrumentalized by abusers…

Yes, it happens.

Generally in rural areas, when one denounces the bad behavior of any authority, the people of authority’s family and tribe gang up on the that person, accusing them of wanting to kidnap their “brother” so that their family or tribe “loses power”.

In this way, the slightest effort to seek justice and the rule of law is tribalized. This happens even in Christian circles.

Therefore, when a priest or a pastor behaves badly (in any area) and Christians dare to make a report, the accusers are insulted and even physically attacked by members of the pastor’s or priest’s family and tribe.

In the case of sexual abuse, those who have dared to make an accusation have been threatened and sometimes even physically attacked by the family of the priest or pastor.

In this context, both the victims and the witnesses live in deep fear of these reprisals and prefer never to tell the truth of the facts. They prefer to remain silent forever.

However, a great deal of work is being done in several judicial environments to protect victims and witnesses, so that they can testify in complete safety for their lives.

You also mention the use of drugs by abusers. Are some victims of sexual abuse on drugs?

Yes. This results in a lack of traceability.

In fact, some sexual abuse is done in a context where the abuser drugs the victim.

Here in DR Congo, I know of several cases where pastors, prophets or priests who receive young Christian women for spiritual guidance, offer them a juice (or something else) to drink, in which they have put a little sleeping powder.

The young woman suddenly falls asleep for two or three hours, and when she wakes up, she finds that she has been undressed and then badly re-dressed, sometimes even bleeding.

In this context, it is impossible to accuse the priest of rape with objective evidence, because in the trials they will ask to tell exactly what happened, but the victim is unable to describe the words and actions of the abuser because she was under the influence of a drug.

This is how many priests, pastors and prophets have been found innocent in church court: the victim cannot prove that it was really him.

Therefore, there is no traceability of the act of aggression. This situation deeply humiliates the victim and her lawyers.

Young women victims who have been subjected to this kind of situation prefer to keep silent, rather than make an accusation and then suffer this humiliation a second or third time.

However, the civil, ecclesial and family authorities have been made sufficiently aware: so that the victim is called a victim and is protected.

The abusers will not be able to hide because there are now several mechanisms to find them.

The consecrated person is considered by many African Christians as a sacred person. Can this image be a block when it comes to denouncing an abuser who turns out to be a “servant of God”?

Yes, this is one of the reasons highlighted in the report. In the minds of many Congolese Christians, the person of the “servant of God” is “sacred”.

When there is a touch in a positive context (sacraments and sacramentals), one comes out of it blessed by God; on the other hand, when there is a touch in a negative context, people are convinced that they automatically receive a divine curse, whatever the circumstances may be.

It is in this context that the victims (men and women) of sexual abuse by pastors, prophets and priests are deeply convinced that they are cursed by God and that they have betrayed the Church: even if they are victims, the simple fact of negative contact with the body of the “servant of God” makes them convinced that God is not pleased, that there is a betrayal on their part.

Therefore, instead of denouncing the abuser, they denounce themselves as “sinners”, often with morbid guilt.

This is why they refuse to come forward or testify: they are entirely focused on this guilt, and to go and publicly denounce a “servant of God” is to do further harm to the Church and to God.

If it is a “servant of God” who has a high function in the Church, it is even worse: they are convinced that to accuse is to do harm to Jesus Christ himself!

However, the current legislation in the Catholic Church does not exonerate clerics at all and several measures have been taken by our Catholic Church to make the victim feel comfortable in calling the evil by its name and denouncing it.

In other Christian denominations, there is also a great awakening on this issue, so that the victims open their mouths and make an accusation to the police.

You also mention the question of the catechesis promoted around forgiveness in our Churches in Africa, which does not facilitate the denunciation of abusers…

In almost all Christian circles in the DR Congo, victims are told that in the Bible, God asks them to forgive their abusers, so they should “forget” and not accuse the abuser.

Generally, it is the lawyers who encourage denunciation, but not the devoted Christians.

By dint of hearing that a “true Christian” must forgive, victims are almost ashamed to accuse and testify to sexual abuse committed both in the family and within the structures of the Church.

Fortunately, the social doctrine of the Catholic Church combines forgiveness and justice: forgiving in one’s heart does not mean whitewashing evil and sin. Several documents of the Magisterium are firm about this.

When an attempt was made to assassinate Pope John Paul II, he forgave his enemy and even visited him in prison several times.

However, at the same time, he let the justice of Italy do its work.

The man had been judged according to the law of the land and punished as expected, so that he would become aware of the seriousness of the evil he had committed and not do it again.

It is also to protect potential future victims.

One of the major issues in abuse is consent. As you indicate in your report, it is sometimes manipulated…

Yes, consent is sometimes extracted by trickery and manipulation of the victims’ conscience.

In fact, in the family context, many parents or elders commit incestuous rape by manipulating their victims on the sensitive subject of obedience to parents: “Would you really refuse something to your parent?” It is a manipulation of the conscience.

This is also found in the ecclesial context: some priests, pastors and prophets obtain the consent of their victims using two types of manipulation.

First, to young women of extreme piety, perverted clerics explain, with insistence and based upon a manipulation of 2 Cor 11, 2, that they are “wives” of Jesus, and that a “good wife” does not refuse her husband anything.

In a second step, the priest, pastor or prophet is presented as the physical representative of Jesus on earth: Christ will “use” the body of his servant to show affection to his “bride”.

In this context, young women without much discernment and critical thinking let themselves be wrapped up, convinced that they have a privilege that many women do not have.

The second type of manipulation concerns people who have an extreme fear of the invisible world, of spells and other such things.

Perverse “servants of God” explain to them that they need a physical deliverance consisting of a “spiritual massage” with anointing of holy oil.

They manage to “convince” the young women indiscriminately that for their deliverance they need not only an external anointing with oil on their completely naked body, but that this anointing must be done all the way to the inside of the body, through a coupling.

And in both of these situations, when the young women realize that there has been sexual abuse and complain, the perverted “servant of God” responds that they had been ‘consenting.’

And it is impossible for the victims to prove that there was manipulation, because they have no solid arguments.

It is often in these two situations that young women find themselves in sexual slavery, because the “servant of God” multiplies the “deliverance” sessions that he claims are “necessary” for the salvation of the young woman.

However, this is no longer going to work because for several years now, a large-scale action has been carried out in a pastoral context to give Christians points of reference to unearth interpretations of the Bible that are instrumentalized in the service of human wickedness and sin.

In some cases of rape, are family members corrupted by the abusers or do they use the situation to enrich themselves?

In some cases of rape, family members who are greedy for money take advantage of the situation to blackmail the “servant of God” who committed the sexual abuse.

They are usually supported by lawyers or jurists who know the law.

The suffering of the abused woman becomes their business to extract money from the abuser, in exchange for their silence.

As a form of blackmail, cash is usually demanded, but there are cases where a heavier compensation for the loss of virginity and the honor of the family/tribe is demanded, for example, sending the young woman to study abroad, buying a plot of land for the family, giving the blackmailer a position of power, etc.

Sometimes the victims themselves enters into this game of blackmail, but sometimes they are scandalized by it and stay away from the negotiations.

And when the abuser has conceded to this blackmail, there is no denunciation: both the family and the victim will refuse to testify, or will outright testify for the innocence of the abuser.

In addition to these factors, there is the great modesty of our African cultures…In African cultures, there is a lot of modesty regarding the intimacy of the human body.

Therefore, it is very impolite and indecent to give details about actions and facts concerning human sexuality.

So in the case of sexual abuse, both the victims (men and women) and the witnesses refuse to give details of what happened, out of etiquette in this area (generally called “shame” in African languages).

However, the highly publicized popularization of the Congolese state law on sexual violence over the past twenty years is bearing fruit: victims are beginning to overcome modesty and speak out, even in rural areas.

https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/why-sexual-abuse-mostly-goes-unreported-in-africa/15962