Sexual violence is on the rise in Zambia, with some 3,000 cases of child rape recorded since October. Activists are calling for reforms and actions to punish offenders women and children.
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00:00Stella is a rape survivor who lives in Nusaka, Zambia's capital city.
00:07My mother sent me with my sister to draw water from the well.
00:13It was quite a long distance from home and when we were drawing water at the well,
00:18three boys came and asked us where our father was
00:23and asked us to go with them as they had something to tell us.
00:27We refused but they quickly started chasing us
00:32and we ended up in a nearby house to hide for safety.
00:36But as soon as we entered this house, the man inside caught us
00:41and the three boys joined in and they all raped us.
00:45They threatened to kill us if we told anyone about the incident.
00:51No one believed Stella who now lives in fear at a shelter
00:55and cannot go to school.
00:57Her attackers are still roaming the streets.
01:00Grace was repeatedly sexually assaulted between the ages of 7 to 10 by her uncle.
01:07She is now 28.
01:09It started when he would touch my small breasts, call me to his room where I used to sleep,
01:21make me touch his body from head to toe.
01:26And yeah, it went on like that until I was a bit older, 7, 8, when he started.
01:35I'm now advancing to, I don't know the right way to use but yeah, penetrating, you know, arousing me.
01:54And he did break my vagina, my virginity when I was 10 years old.
02:05The man who left Grace with a sexually transmitted disease has never been arrested.
02:11Grace is now an activist campaigning against child rape in her community.
02:17Activists are worried by the increase in sexual violence against women and children.
02:25Beauty Katebe heads the Non-Governmental Coordinating Council, NGOCC, an umbrella body for women's groups in Zambia.
02:35The council has been leading cause for harsher punishment for sexual offenders.
02:41It's actually arising from a number of beliefs, starting from religion, rituals, all the way to cultural and traditional norms.
02:57So it's quite a very huge problem because even where we are thinking that the children can be protected, for example, the church,
03:08that is where we have pastors defiling the children.
03:13Where we have confidence that the children can be protected, like for example, the police, the police officers are also defiling the children.
03:24So it's quite rampant, quite alarming and quite disturbing for us as mothers.
03:29Groups like the Young Women's Christian Association, YWCA, provide support for survivors of sexual violence.
03:38YWCA is helping women and children in different forms.
03:43So we offer psychosocial counselling to our victims as well as legal services.
03:51We also offer sheltering services where we shelter children below the age of 18 as well as women that are sexually abused above the age of 18.
04:01So with the increasing cases of sexual violence in Zambia, I would say we are not even coping because the numbers keep increasing every day.
04:13Although Zambia has laws to protect women and children, many argue that implementation is often lacking.
04:20The government has promised reforms to ensure that offenders are punished.
04:26Not too long ago, Mr. Speaker, we learned of a family of six where the father was abusing his own children, four of them.
04:39And there was a clip on a child who's 10 years old whom he said that had become his second wife.
04:48How low can we go as a nation? How low can we go as a society? And we are here as representatives of the people.
04:59Laws have been made, but what is happening is sickening. And it should disturb all of us because it is beyond laws now.
05:09It is us as Zambians to interrogate why our morals have decayed.
05:16Survivors like Stella are hoping to see reforms to prevent child rape soon.
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