My name is Hellen Lunkuse W. Tanyinga –https://vimeo.com/287109044 born and raised in Kamuli Busoga region in Eastern Uganda. I am the Founder & Executive Director of a Non-Government Organization called Rape Hurts Foundation (RHF). Allow me share with you a personal story, a story, as you shall find out later, led to the birth of RHF, the organization through which I serve marginalized women and girls especially Victims/Survivors of Sexual & Gender Based Violence, Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery in my country Uganda.
Tuesday July 25 1995 started like any other normal day in my life, I went to school and did my house chores, I had no idea this was the day I was going to be raped! While completing one of my last chores of the day – returning from fetching water from the village-well, on that moonless 8:00pm night, a man throw me down, pounced on me – I will save you the details! What I will tell you openly, though, is that Rape Hurts! Everything about rape hurts so much. The helplessness I felt in that dark night, the loud cries I made for help to no response, the fact that I knew the adult man who was raping me as someone supposed to protect me, the fact that even after being raped I still feared to report the man who raped me to my polygamous father, the fact that on reporting the man who raped me my father did not only blame me for being raped but wanted me to get married to the man that hurt me so much, the many other facts I cannot mention here, all of them – are reasons that make rape hurt so much! The feeling of ‘being a victim but at the same time blamed by society’, the feeling of vulnerability, fear, insecurity, and shame from withinmy soul, and from the environment around me – my home, my village, my school, and my community are what made rape hurt me much.
I am neither the first nor the last victim of rape! Reports show that, on average, over 39,000cases of rape and defilement are registered with Uganda Police annually. What is more scaring is that, as was in my case when I was raped, in my country Uganda, at all levels rapists are cheered on, while victims are castigated. However, hundreds of thousands of rape cases are never reported!!! In 2018 one of the ministers in the Uganda government said, “Women currently dress poorly especially the youth. If she is dressed poorly and is raped, no one should be arrested”! – Ronald Kibuule. Should rape be society’s punishment to a child who dresses inappropriately? And as a matter of fact, the night I was raped I was not dressed poorly!
Going through painful physical and emotional struggles after I was raped, and observing the struggles many other victims of rape undergo changed me. I developed deeper interest in learning more about rape. The more I learned about rape, the more the urge to do something grew in me. That is how the organization Rape Hurts Foundation was born.
RHF is a non-profit organization working with marginalized victims & survivors of Gender Based Violence (GBV), and human trafficking. RHF uses a holistic approach to serve and reach out to women & children promoting Health & Care, Emergency Response to cases of GBV, Access to Education & Clean Water, Response to violent & harmful cultural practices like FGM.
Under my leadership, RHF has been able to reach out to over 850,000 women & children in the last ten years in partnership and with support from Thomson Reuters Foundation UK. We have made sustainable achievements in ensuring access to Safe Clean Water for the Women headed households. A key goal of RHF is to partner with organisations and individuals with missions in harmony with that of RHF.
I am proud today that from a traumatizing experience, and with support from good people I have been able to heal and I am promoting not only healing to other victims of rape, but prevent rape (or broadly GBV) from happening to anyone else. I went ahead to attain a bachelor’s degree at Makerere University Kampala, becoming the first female graduate in my village – Bukyerimba Kamuli village.
I would love to talk more with anyone of you reading this and feel you would like to be a part of efforts to support survivors. We can always explore possible of strategic partnership, networking and/or corroboration.
Rape Hurts, I know it from experience.
