It has been three months since famine, which has been caused by a longstanding conflict between the government and rebels groups, was declared in some parts of South Sudan.
But areas outside the famine zones are also suffering from severe food shortages.
More than a million people in the country are on the brink of starvation. Some of them are trying to flee to neighboring Sudan for relief.
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan reports from Aweil, South Sudan.
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Stories of child sex abuse in South Africa
Inspired by her own experience of sexual abuse, one photojournalist began documenting the victims and the perpetrators.
| A young girl attempts to flee from the examining room before a medical forensic examination. A nine-year-old relative who admitted to playing “sexual games” with her was later discovered to have been abused himself. Both children were sent for counselling. The Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children, Johannesburg, March 2003 [Mariella Furrer] |
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Maya Angelou
When I was about five years old, I was sexually abused by a stranger. I don’t think at that age I really understood what it was that had happened to me. But, somehow, I knew it was wrong and I felt to blame for letting the man touch me.
Shortly after the incident, I told my parents about it. I cannot begin to imagine the weight my disclosure must have had on them – the grief and the rage; furious at themselves for failing to protect me, enraged at the man for doing this to me, and infuriated at the world for allowing this to happen to their young daughter.
The molestation could not have lasted more than a couple of minutes, but the incident affected my life in ways that are difficult to articulate.
I don’t think as a five-year-old you really understand that you have lost something when you are abused, but you have – something does change.
You lose your childhood really, your innocence is snatched away, and what little is left of that once pure child is now transformed into a sexual being, a child with a knowledge of things way before her time.
From that moment on things were very different for me. I began covering myself up. Well into my teens I wore a t-shirt whenever I swam. I hated it when men stared at me; it made me uncomfortable. I went through a bulimic phase and hated my body and the attention it brought.
It took me a very long time after that to trust a man – or anyone – again.
My Piece of Sky is the result of a journey into the world of child sexual abuse.
It focuses on the crisis in South Africa, a country dealing with an epidemic of child sexual abuse, but it is not exclusively for South Africans.
Through photographs, journals, artwork and testimonies from the abused and abusers, it offers a glimpse into a world of utter depravity, of absolute horror, but of incredible resilience, too, as young survivors struggle to rebuild their lives.
My exploration began in November 2002, when I received an assignment from a US-based women’s magazine to take photographs for an article on infant rape in South Africa.
I went to work with the South African Police Child Protection Unit in Port Shepstone, a town in the southeast of the country. I was only with them for a few days, but I was shocked by the numbers of children involved, and decided to continue working on the issue. The more I researched, the bigger the project became.
Most of my access came through the Johannesburg-based Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children and the South African Police Services. Other contacts were made through individuals working in the field of child protection and healing.
Young survivors are surrounded by child rights activists and child protection officers whose absolute priority is the wellbeing of the children. It took me a very long time to gain their trust, but once I had it, I was considered one of them.
Today, I believe that I am as much an activist for the rights and protection of these children as anyone else, and many police officers and child protection advocates remain my dear friends, as do many of the young survivors and their families.
All my photos and interviews with children were made with consent from the child’s guardian or caretaker. Once I had this, I would always explain to the child (if they were old enough to understand) that I was working on a project about the bad things that people do to children, that it also happened to me, and that I really hoped that one day when people saw these photos and read these interviews they would want help to stop this happening to other children.
I also guaranteed that they would never be identifiable in photos or interviews.
When a child is molested or raped, they lose control over what is happening to them and their bodies, so while working with victims I was very sensitive about giving control back to them.
I would begin by sitting on the floor in a corner or somewhere out of the way. Once in my spot, I would move very little. I would take very few photos, watching to see how the children responded to the camera. I would interact with them often and become part of the team that worked to comfort them and make them feel safe. Throughout the process I would tell them that if at any time they felt uncomfortable with me or my camera, I would stop.
A few years into the project I decided I needed more than photography to tell this story. I was curious to know more about child sexual abuse; its impact on the survivors, their families, the police, the lawyers, and to try to understand what motivated the perpetrators. So I began doing in-depth interviews.
I used no particular set of questions during interviews. Instead, I formulated questions based on who I was working with, questions that would give me a better psychological and emotional understanding of their lives. I would always begin my interview by asking them to relay their story to me and as they talked I would jot down any questions that came to mind.
Once they finished their story, I would ask more in-depth, personal questions related to the psychology behind the trauma. What were they thinking when they were going through the attack? How did it impact them throughout their life – emotionally and sexually?
When I interviewed the perpetrators, it was with the understanding that My Piece of Sky would take some time to complete, and that they would not be identified, so as not to influence any pending court cases.
My interviews with them were really motivated by me wanting to understand their childhoods, when they were first attracted to children, whether they were abused or not, how they chose their victims, and how they went about abusing them.
My work with perpetrators threw me into a very deep depression – but not for the reasons you might think.
The truth is we all have multiple facets to our personalities and these perpetrators were no different. They were abusers of children, but some of them were funny, intelligent, creative and caring.
After attending their group sessions for several weeks, one of the perpetrators asked me in front of the group how I felt about them now.
“Do you think we are all monsters?” I didn’t.
I could not at all condone what they had done, but I did not hate them. With this discovery, my black and white world of right and wrong, good and evil, caved in on top of me.
All these years later, I am not the same person. Not because I have aged, but because I have learned so much – too much really.
Meeting these people and hearing their stories has taken me to the limits of my psychological, emotional and spiritual existence. It has tested me in ways that I am not yet able to comprehend, and after many of the interviews I would lie on my floor for hours, in shock at what I had heard.
Many times I have wanted to lock these interviews and photos up and walk away from them; pretend I had never seen them or heard them.
Only a sense of obligation to those who shared their deepest, darkest secrets so that it does not happen again has prevented me from doing so.
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| A child’s drawing at the Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children in Johannesburg. April 2003 [Mariella Furrer] |
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| Tinka Labuschagne, a senior education specialist with the South African Ministry of Education, comforts a 10-year-old girl who had the previous day disclosed to her teacher that her brother and two of his friends forced her to perform oral sex. She had severe problems with her eyes, a sore throat, vaginal discomfort, and was suspected to be suffering from gonorrhoea. Thembisa, January 2006 [Mariella Furrer] |
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| The mutilated legs of Susanna. Initiated into a satanic cult at the age of eight, Susanna, 24, suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Having endured severe ritualistic sexual abuse for almost 18 years, she developed DID as a coping mechanism and has more than 200 different identities, many of whom are self-mutilators. The initiations involved many forms of sexual abuse, including bestiality, gang rapes and child pornography. December 2008 [Mariella Furrer] |
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| Thirteen-year-old Jennifer sits in a police car after being rescued during a night raid. Abducted in Durban, she had been brought to Johannesburg and forced into the sex trade. She said that although she had not been made to work yet, the pimp and another man spiked her drink and raped her. Germistan, November, 2004 [Mariella Furrer] |
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| Inspector ‘Stroppie’ Grobbelaar struggles to tell Anna Lesele, the aunt and adoptive mother of seven-year-old Kamo, that the search team hasn’t found anything. Grobbelaar passed by her house every day to keep her posted. The search went on for a month. Kamo was never found. Johannesburg, December 2005 [Mariella Furrer] |
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| The funeral for three-year-old Sibongile Mokoena, who was raped and murdered on November 8, 2003. A 23-year-old family acquaintance was arrested. Due to Mokoena’s family’s lack of funds, a local funeral home donated the casket and paid for the funeral. Johannesburg, 2003 [Mariella Furrer] |
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| A schoolmate of Sheldean Human cries during her memorial service. Two weeks after her disappearance, Sheldean’s body was found after a confession by a 25-year-old man. She had been sexually molested and murdered. Pretoria, March 2007 [Mariella Furrer] |
The above is the foreword to Mariella Furrer’s My Piece of Sky: Stories of Child Sexual Abuse. For more information on the book, visit www.mypieceofsky.com
Sister of rape victim Theo: ‘Police consider us rats’
Eleanor says her younger brother Theo, who was attacked by French police, suffers mentally as family waits for justice.
Stop-and-searches are frequent in the “banlieues”. They are sometimes carried out more than once a day, often with aggression, and usually target non-white citizens and immigrants, according to several residents Al Jazeera spoke to in Aulnay-sous-Bois and other impoverished suburbs.
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| Aulnay-sous-Bois is a suburb on the outskirts of Paris where police frequently carry out stop-and-search operations on young people [Raymond Bobar/Al Jazeera] |
“Some policemen consider us like rats, we don’t have rights. Their attitude is ‘I can beat you and speak to you however I wish. I am the boss, you are the shit.’ Animals have more respect,” says Eleanor, as she reflects on a stop-and-search 10 days earlier, where tear gas canisters were unleashed on a group of black and Arab boys in the estate.
Official data to determine whether or not racial profiling is systemic does not exist because it is against the law in France, where the concept of “colour-blindness” reigns, to collect information about ethnicity.
‘I couldn’t understand how it had come to this’
Theo says officers shouted racist insults at him, calling him “negro” and “bitch”, inserted a baton into his anus violently and beat him, focusing on his private parts until he was no longer able to sit up. They sprayed an entire can of tear gas on him, he says.
Grainy video footage filmed by bystanders of the end of the episode shows officers propping up Theo, who is handcuffed, limping and wearing only one trainer having lost the other in the attack, and escorting him to a police car.
While in the back seat, Theo says, officers spat in his face, filmed the abuse on mobile phones, and posted it to SnapChat.
Covered in blood, he was hospitalised and needed major emergency surgery.
An X-ray, Eleanor says, shows the baton was inserted at least 10 centimetres; Theo’s large intestine was severely damaged.
A doctor declared him unfit for work for at least 60 days.
Police interrogated Theo for several hours from his hospital bed without the presence of a lawyer, and prevented family from visiting while he was still officially under arrest.
| The practice of stop and search is essentially targeted on these Arab and black youths by the officers working in poor neighbourhoods of the banlieues. |
“When I got to the hospital, my brothers called me and said, ‘Listen, the charge is rape.’ I couldn’t believe it. They said they put a baton inside him. The connection between stop-and-search and baton rape, I couldn’t understand how it had come to this. I walked up and down the ward for three minutes alone, crying. My father was hiding in a corner. Another brother said, ‘Please stop crying, I can’t stand it.’
“When I saw Theo, I started crying again and apologised, but he was strong. I said, ‘You have the right to cry, don’t try and be strong for us.’ When another brother came in, he cried. Then Theo shed some tears. He’s our youngest brother. There we were, all in one room, comforting each other. About 15 of us, brothers, sisters and cousins.”
The four officers involved, three of whom are charged with assault, have been suspended. All deny the allegations against them.
A magistrate has charged one of the officers with rape and is still investigating the case.
‘A common experience’
“The conditions of [Theo’s] arrest reflect a common experience for young men of working-class background belonging to ethno-racial minorities,” says Didier Fassin, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the author of Enforcing Order: Ethnography of Urban Policing.
“The practice of stop and search, often illegal and acknowledged as such by officers’ superiors, is essentially targeted on these Arab and black youths by the officers working in poor neighbourhoods of the banlieues.”
“Affaire Theo”, as it is known in France, set off days of protests, some peaceful, others violent as anger swelled, despite Theo calling for calm from his hospital bed, flanked by Francois Hollande, the then president.
“Theo reacted with dignity and responsibility,” Hollande tweeted at the time, adding “Justice will be served.”
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| French President Francois Hollande pays a visit to Theo at the Robert Ballanger hospital in Aulnay-sous-Bois [Arnaud Journois/EPA] |
“The hypocritical wave of government indignation was not followed by any exemplary procedure against the police officers who participated in the rape,” says Fania Noel, a black feminist and anti-racism activist. “Once again, we have seen that the police have the most complete impunity when it comes to violence against people of colour in France, even more when they come from low-income communities.”
There is also the issue of which officers in particular are serving these communities.
Created in 1994 to monitor “sensitive” neighbourhoods, the brigades anti-criminalite (BAC), or anti-crime squads, comprise volunteers from other national police units.
“The BAC is the most hated police unit in the banlieues,” author Cathy Lisa Schneider writes in Police Power and Race Riots. “Because French police is centralised, new recruits are usually stationed in unfamiliar territory. Four out of five officers come from rural areas and small towns. The newest and least experienced among them are often stationed in the banlieues.”
The creation of special anticrime squads worsened the situation, Fassin says.
“And they are the most often involved in cases of violence. This violence is not only physical, but also moral, via forms of humiliation and debasement in front of friends and relatives. It is often accompanied by racist and sexist comments, which should perhaps not be a surprise since a recent poll showed that more than half of the police voted for the far-right party,” he explains.
“The aim of this law and order policy is not to protect the public order since, as one high official told me, these special units often create more problems than they solve when they intervene, but to impose a social order, in which these youth learn their place in society.”
‘Our community is angry’
Theo’s family members have not revealed their surname to the media, out of fear of reprisal attacks from the far right for speaking out against the police. Even so, they have received hate mail. “We’re not here to support you,” one man wrote. “Go back to Africa.”
They have also received letters of support, and have the unanimous backing of the neighbourhood.
| Brutality and violence have become habitual for the inhabitants of the suburbs and a way for the police to affirm their authority and power. |
“Our community is angry, but we have told everyone to wait for the legal response and not to be impassioned,” Eleanor says. “Everybody came to hospital, even people we didn’t know from Aulnay-sous-Bois and neighbouring areas. One friend said, ‘Again it’s another fight, we are small, they [the police] are tall.’ We don’t want the police to brush this under the carpet. Our people listened to us, we have chosen to wait for justice.”
Despite initial protests, public anger has not swelled to the extent of the unrest in 2005.
Then, the deaths of black and Arab teenagers from the Clichy-sous-Bois suburb, Bouna Traore and Zyed Benna, sparked three weeks of riots. They were killed by electrocution after running away from police and hiding in a power station, fearing lengthy interrogation from a stop-and-search.
“Theo’s case reminds us of the tense relations between police and the mostly poor, non-white population, often the descendants of colonised people, who live in the margins of the capital,” says Kiymis, a French author and “Afrofeminist” blogger. “Brutality and violence have become habitual for the inhabitants of [the suburbs] and a way for the police to affirm their authority and power.”
Solutions to end police brutality
Though Emmanuel Macron, the new president, denounced France’s colonial past as “a crime against humanity” during the election campaign, he was less vocal about structural racism and police brutality.
“Macron’s government will have to work on the mutual mistrust between the police and suburban youth,” says Thomas Roulet, a sociologist and professor at King’s College London. “Balanced politics and better integration of those urban areas will tackle the problem at its roots and help relax the tensions.”
| Macron is going to find Theo’s case on his doorstep. We want to see concrete action. |
Others have suggested initiatives to make the police accountable.
In 2012, Stop le Controle au Facies (Stop appearance-based stop and searches) – a collective of activists – proposed a receipt system to the government: police would have to give a document to those they stopped, providing their reasons for the search and the time of the interrogation.
The proposal was never enacted into law, despite Hollande, then president, expressing support.
“To solve these difficult issues a profound reform of the police would be necessary, so that officers would be better recruited, properly trained, effectively supervised and punished when they violate the law or their ethical code,” says Fassin. “But the two most urgent and practical decisions would be the dissolution of the anticrime squads and the establishment of receipts for stop and search.”
Kiymis, too, recommends police training.
For Eleanor, the solution lies in engagement.
“Macron is going to find Theo’s case on his doorstep. We want to see concrete action. We want to make proposals and be listened to, we don’t want their solutions for our community. We know our situation, and our place. We have to build together – you have to know what it’s like for us here before giving us answers.”
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