Ma
ryam was five months pregnant and living in Mogadishu’s Wadajir district when, one night in 2012, four men entered her home and took turns raping her while one of them stood guard outside. The last one stabbed her with the bayonet of his gun.
The next day, still bleeding, Maryam went to the police. When she told them what happened, they told her to clean her own blood off the floor and get out. Maryam never returned to pursue justice against the perpetrators. Three months later, she says, she was raped again.
“When we saw someone, we used to say, ‘Hi, how are you,’ ” Maryam told Human Rights Watch, which published her story last year. “Now when we see each other we ask, ‘Were you raped today?’ ”
In Somalia, sexual violence is a horrifyingly real threat. In July 2013, a mother of four was attacked in Mogadishu, the capital. It happened at night. The man entered her home with a knife. “I tried to resist but he kept saying he would kill me,” the woman told Amnesty International. “So I stopped.” While her children slept, the man raped her.
[For more of this story, written by Jacob Kushner, go to http://www.takepart.com/featur...sexual-offences-bill]
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