My body
is pulsing with slight shivers, and I curl my toes to bring heat back to my
iced feet. It’s Swaziland, so it can’t be that cold, right? But the wooden courtroom
bench beneath me is stony and the air above feels as if the sun hasn’t shone in
weeks. For her, it must feel like years. She stands like a statue, her hands
clenched behind her back while I sit and stare at the defense attorney who has
been questioning her for over an hour and a half already.
I can’t
tell if my stomach is quivering because it’s cold or because it’s keeping me
from standing up and punching him.
“I put
it to you, _________” he says her name as if he knows her, and it feels like
nails on a chalkboard. “You are lying. Tell us, when did you become such a promiscuous
girl and wayward child? You were having a relationship with __________ and
tried to hide it by blaming the accused.”
“I don’t
know anything of that. What I know is he raped me,” she responded, her voice
cracking like icicles melting.
She was
eleven years old during the time that this occurred. And this defense attorney
is telling her she was promiscuous and wayward and willingly having a
relationship with an old man – and to cover it up, she made up a story about
the accused who sits there soaking up this moment of watching her squirm.
“Why
didn’t you report it right away? Why did you wait three years to report it?”
“Because
he threatened to kill me.”
“No, I
put it to you, __________, that you didn’t report it for three years because it
never happened. You reported it to get on better graces with your grandma who
didn’t like the accused.”
“I don’t
know anything of that. I know that he threatened to kill me,” she repeats.
It went
on like this for two straight hours. She stood for TWO hours as this attorney
spat pointed questions – no, not even questions! Half of his approach was
telling her things, making statements and then saying, “What do you have to say
about that?”
There
was a point where he kept mentioning things like, “If you were really traumatized,
you would have reported… or You wouldn’t have gone back to him when he called
you… or You wouldn’t have listened to so-called threats…etc. I wanted to yell at him that he was simply
making a fool of himself by clearly knowing NOTHING about trauma.
Ooh, he
was horrifically good at his job. So much so that I can’t picture him sleeping
that night, recounting the abusive comments he spat out at a victim while
defending so relentlessly the perpetrator.
He
actually came to confront me at the end, though. It was about a letter of
complaint that I had submitted to the Ministry of Justice about him and his “convenient”
lack of appearance for the past SEVEN court attempts. Over the past FIVE YEARS,
the case has been in existence, and the defense attorney never showed up once.
So the case was always postponed. Thanks to the advice from some local Swazis,
I followed their steps and submitted a letter of complaint to the correct
offices. The authorities were quite upset and moved by the complaint and
carried out their investigation. I don’t know what he – the defense attorney –
was told, but he had serious pressure breathing down his back. And he came to
confront me about the letter, claiming it was pointed and unfair.
I simply
repeated, “No, sir, what’s UNFAIR is this girl having to tell her story SEVEN
times over and over, to be traumatized, exposed to her perpetrator, and
undefended in a place where justice is supposed to reign. Not excuses from the
defense attorney to not show up.”
“But,
they were good excuses…”
He
continued talking and I couldn’t help but scoff. He said something like, let’s
all focus on her and how to finish this case, and I said that’s exactly what
the letter is for. While he still tried intimidating us that the letter could
cause problems, I stood unmoved by his pity party. And I gloried in the fact
that someone in authority had clearly warned him something severe. He ended by
saying although the letter was unfair and blah blah blah, he respected me for
taking the right steps and not taking it to the media. Again…thinking only of
himself.
Meanwhile,
the girl whose trial it stood there while he and I bantered back and forth
until he left after his last comment. When I left, I asked her what she thought
of this whole process and me personally getting involved. Did she think I was
overstepping anything? She had read through and approved my letter of
complaint, but she was so silent that day, I couldn’t tell if she was bothered
more or not. She wrote me a letter the next day entitled: To my Wonder Woman:
“How
blessed I am to have someone to call her mother. Educated people say a true
mother fights for her child…Thank you for choosing me and for making sure my
case proceeds, really my case was not going to proceed without you. The letter
you wrote was perfect. In the end, whether he is found guilty or not, I don’t’
care for he knows the truth deep within his heard, which is the one that will
set him free. You stood for the forgotten, least and the last, and by doing so
you brought peace, joy, and freedom in my heart. You are my hero, Mom.”
