Thread: Thrown to the dogs

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap...s-1853937.html

Independent Appeal: Jennipher, the woman thrown to the dogs

When Nathan Awoloi bought his wife for two cows, he believed it gave him the right to treat her like an animal. Claire Soares reports from Pallisa, Uganda, on the charity that saved her

Thursday, 31 December 2009

Hunched over a sewing machine, Jennipher Alupot is an unlikely poster girl for the women's rights movement. In fact, the young Ugandan mother is totally unaware of how her story – almost too horrific to be believed – has caused waves across the country and down the corridors of power, ultimately giving thousands of abused women the chance of justice.

For seven years, Jennipher was forced to breastfeed the puppies of her husband's hunting dogs. After drinking and smoking heavily, Nathan Alowoi would appear at the marital bed, bind his young wife's legs and hands together and force the mewling animals to her nipple.

He had handed over two cows to his father-in-law as part of the "bride price" for his new wife. So, he reasoned, if the cows were no longer around to provide milk then his new purchase would have to provide for the pups. "I had to feed them all through the night; then in the morning he would untie me," his wife, now 26, explains matter-of-factly.

Her ordeal began out in the rural east in 2002 with the arrival of her first-born, a daughter called Achom. There was a reprieve with the second child, a boy named after his father as tradition dictates and thus protected from the indignity of having to share his mother's breast with the puppies. But when the third child, another son, Olinga, was born, a new litter was brought to suckle.

That baby, she recalls, started having fits and foaming at the mouth. Olinga died just before his second birthday. "I think it could have been something to do with the dogs," his mother says.

Jennipher had tried to resist her husband before and had alerted her own family, her in-laws and tribal elders to her suffering. She had even dared to go to the police in the nearest town, Pallisa. All in vain.

After her baby son's death, she hoped her husband's perversion might at least end. Then this March, she gave birth to another daughter, Apunyo, and the abuse started up once more, only more violently. One night when she protested, her husband pierced her with a spear under the chin.
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thats so cruel..