M.G. was a schoolgirl, sitting one evening doing her homework in her boarding school in Northern Uganda, when she heard shouts and confusion outside. There were several girls in the room with her and they gathered around the window to see what was happening. In the grounds around the school they could see men in uniform. We knew there was danger, she says. We had heard stories of mercenaries attacking other schools nearby and kidnapping the pupils. As the men approached, M.G. slipped over the window sill and hid in the bushes. Behind her, she could hear cries and more shouting.
Later, when all was quiet, not daring to go back to see what had happened, she began walking away from the school. Eventually she reached a small house and knocked on the door. The woman who let her in was friendly and allowed her to stay; they couldnt understand each other as M.G. comes from Eastern Uganda and they spoke no common language. M.G. was just 17. She could not quite decide what to do next.
Late one night, when she had been there several days, there were loud knocks on the door. Men in rough and ragged uniforms came in and pulled her outside. She was raped, repeatedly, and lost consciousness. When she came to she found herself lying in the bushes nearby, sore and bleeding. Her arms and legs were tied up. Three men appeared and raped me again. They left me tied up, and gave me urine to drink. Two days later, they untied me and told me to follow them, crawling on my hands and knees. When I went too slowly they kicked and dragged me. When I resisted, one of them heated a long metal bar until it was red hot and put it on my stomach. M.G. has a scar across the middle of her body.
Eventually, walking and crawling, M.G. reached a camp. She understood that the men were mercenary soldiers, though she never found out who they were fighting. In the camp she discovered other young girls. In the evenings, the men came over and chose a girl for the night. Every night I was raped, M.G. says. One of the leaders took me with him every night. I kept begging him to let me go. When he was drunk or angry, he made marks all over my body, cutting my back and chest with a razor blade, saying that the scars would mark me as his. In the daytime, if we did anything wrong we were punished by being burnt with melted plastic, heated up over the fire, then dripped over our bodies.
During the daytime, the girls cooked, did the washing and fetched the water. After what M.G. calculated to be about a month, the mercenaries stopped bothering to guard them so closely. Soon, they left them alone in the camp for several hours at a time. M.G. and another girl made a plan to escape. One day, when there was no one about, they simply walked off together into the bush. They spent a week walking before they reached a road, living off roots and berries and drinking water from a river. There, they separated. M.G. got a lift on a lorry. Her idea was to make her way to her uncle, who lived in the North. She could not see how to go home. In any case, her mother had died not long after she was born, and her father and brother had other lives.
My uncle was very surprised to see me. He kept asking me why I was there, but I couldnt tell him. I couldnt talk to him about what had happened to me. I was too ashamed. For the next six months I lived in his house. I wanted to die. One day in the market I saw one of the men. I was terrified. Eventually M.G. persuaded her uncle to ring another relative, an aunt living in the UK. She begged to be allowed to visit her. Her uncle paid for a ticket and got her a passport. She arrived in Britain in January 2001 and went to stay with her aunt on the outskirts of London. Both her aunt and her husband were out at work all day but, whether they were at home or away, M.G. stayed in her room. When her aunt questioned her, she refused to say anything.
After almost a year, her aunt could stand it no longer. She told her niece that she would either have to apply for asylum or go back to Uganda. Days passed and M.G. did nothing. They began to argue. In March 2002, when M.G. went on refusing to leave her room, her aunt asked her to leave. M.G. broke down and told her what had happened to her.
Her aunt now arranged for her to approach the immigration officials and ask for asylum in Britain. M.G. was detained and taken to Oakington Detention Centre, where she was seen by doctors. She has been interviewed and is now waiting to hear whether she will be granted leave to remain.
M.G. is now 19. She is a composed, very articulate girl who speaks excellent English. She says that she has terrible nightmares and that she finds it very hard to eat, because she is disgusted and revolted by the memories of what was done to her. She vomits when she thinks too much about the past. She is very frightened of men, and has pains across her back and chest from the times she was tied up. Her body is covered with small scars and patches of discoloured skin, marks made by the many burns and cuts inflicted on her in the mercenaries camp.
