Juba, South Sudan,
Oct 6, 2016(Nyamilepedia) —– Nyamilepedia press caught up with woman who shared her issues as part of her daily domestic violence for years.
Florence Ayul wanted to leave her husband of sixteen years because of his violent behavior towards her and their children.
A-37-years-old woman, resident of Nyakuron West residential area warns her husband on sexual, domestic violence. She says on the day he raped her was her final straw, and found the courage to leave him.
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“For years I tried to leave him but he threatened me with violence every time.” She said.
“He would say: You are not taking my kids from me, you are not taking my home, and you are not taking you away from me.” She said, adding that she was raped earlier this year in her own home by the very man who vowed to honor and protect her
The children had left for school and she was about to get ready for work when her husband, Henericko Jima, told her she was not going to work and they were going to spend the day together. He locked the front door and confiscated her phone.
“He pulled me to the bed and pinned me down with his knees. He is much bigger and stronger than me. I told him not to hurt me. I told him I was ready but he forced his way,” she recalled.
Her husband owned a light firearm, she said, and although he did not threaten to use it on her, she had acquired a protection order fearing he one day would.
“I was too scared that he would hurt my children. He once threatened he would take them from me. “As long as I was around he would not get to the children,” she said. Both their families knew about the couple’s troubled marriage.
Flora said she had sought help from religious leaders who advised her to stay. Over the years she had hoped she could make her marriage work. “After each child, things would be normal for a bit and then the violence would start again.”
She obtained a protection order against him and in 2012 she reported him to the police for beating their son, but later dropped the charges.
The day of the rape, police officers came to their home to hand him an order to appear in court over another violent outburst.
She kept busy, cleaning and cooking. “I was crying the whole time. How can he not show any remorse for violating me like this? How could he not see I did not want this?” Flora added that after the police left, a neighbor asked her for a lift to Juba teaching hospital.
At this point she found the courage to call the police and asked her sister to accompany her to the police station.
The police wanted to know why she had not told the officers at her house earlier, to which she replied: “When you go through something like that, you do not know what to do.”
After making a statement, she was referred for counseling and a medical examination, an experience she described as difficult and invasive but necessary.
In this story, Nyamilepedia Press cannot reach complainant’s husband at this moment to comment on allegation put against him.
Although similar cases of rape allegations continue to rise in African societies today, it is not clear in many African constitutions whether a forceful demand for sexual intercourse between a legitimate husband and a wife constitutes a rape.
In African communities, and particularly South Sudanese communities, men pay expensive dowry to claim their wives, which grand them excessive powers in marriage to expect their wives to humble compromise to their husband’s demands even over their own bodies.
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