Up to 195 pupils of Gahanga Primary School in Kicukiro District have been sexually abused, the school has said. A survey conducted by the school showed that 102 under-age girls and 93 boys were abused at least once, the school’s headmaster Joseph Bungubwenge has said.The school has a total of 1,089 girls and 1,075 boys. Bungubwenge said the study was carried out after two underage pupils carried pregnancies. The study was conducted in May. Bungubwenge said yesterday that three cases involved two primary five pupils and one in primary six had already been reported to police. He further said that tests indicated that 40 pupils were HIV positive, adding that of these only thirteen are currently accessing antiretroviral drugs. Thirty percent of the 47 pupils sampled in primary six admitted having had premature sex, he said. He however said that some of those that are HIV positive contracted the virus during their birth. He also added that the school could not provide ARVs to all infected children due to lack of resources. The school’s matron, According to Ruth Mukankuranga, said that pupils that were defiled are aged between nine and 15 years. Mukankuranga said that most of the pupils were seduced into sexual intercourses by either their close adult relatives or neighbours. According to the survey, no teacher was implicated in having had sexual relationship with any of the affected pupils. “It is mostly other people like Boda Boda riders and shopkeepers who seduce minors with such cheap items as chewing gum, sweets and scholastic materials,” Mukankuranga said. She condemned the recent release of the two men who have been arrested in connection with defilement charges. A 12-year-old pupil (names withheld), a primary three pupil at the same school, is reported to have been sexually abused by a man only identified as Emery. The same man reportedly defiled her sister and another friend of theirs from the same bedroom on the same day. “I was nine years old by then, my sister was 11 years and my friend was 10 years old when this man took all of us to his bedroom at around 10pm,” the juvenile, who lives with her mother, said. She is the last born in her family. A seventeen-year-old primary six pupil alleged that a businessman from the neighborhood identified as Theogene Renzaho enticed her into having unprotected sex with him. “He used to give me money…..sometimes Frw500 or Frw1000, buy me books or pens and one day asked me to come to his bed. We had sex several times until like after a month when my headmaster got to know it and had to intervened,” she said. Another 15 year-old ‘victim’ told The New Times that she was raped by a man aged between 25 to 30 years. She identified the alleged defiler as Papa Mugabe, alleging that he defiled her while she was 10 years old. She said at that time she was his house girl.“My parents died in (1994) Genocide. When I was tired of being homeless I met that man who later turned out to be a nightmare to me; he used to come and stand in the kitchen door way and call me to go and do something for him. He would fond my breasts and one time when his wife was away, he raped me,” she said. She added: “When he dragged me to his room and started to rape me, I screamed but he threatened me that if I don’t keep quiet, he would get a pang and cut. The same situation continued for about six months when he would find me where I was sleeping in the sitting room at the time the wife was in Kibungo (now in Eastern Province).” The alleged victim had however never shared her experience with anybody not until their school gave them questionnaires asking them whether they had ever had sex.Ends
