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Sukulwenkosi Dube Plumtree Correspondent
A NON-Governmental Organisation has come to the aid of a 13-year-old girl from Bulilima District who was impregnated by her family’s 19-year-old herdsman.

The girl – described as intelligent by her father – should have started her Form 1 this year, but dropped out of school because of the pregnancy.

A magistrate told her abuser, Conscience Nleya – who was let off with just a community service sentence after admitting sexual intercourse with a young person- that he had “destroyed her future”.

Now, the NGO, Umuzi Wabancane is stepping in to “restore her hope”.

A panel from Umuzi Wabancane, which is based in Bulawayo, on Monday visited the girl’s home in the Khame area of Bulilima where they donated clothing and groceries valued at $260 to the family and conducted a counselling session for the teenager and her father.

The organisation responded to a publication of the girl’s plight in The Chronicle.

Brett Sibanda, the NGO’s director, said the visit marked the start of a therapeutic programme to ensure that the young girl – who is five-months pregnant – recovered from her ordeal.

He said his organisation would conduct visits to the girl’s homestead every fortnight to ensure that she lived a stable life.

“We decided to go to the ground and have an appreciation of the challenges which this girl and her family are facing. She’s pregnant and in the eyes of people her future is shattered, but we want to make sure that her hope is restored,” Sibanda told The Chronicle.

“Her father is struggling to fend for his family and we want to cater for this girl’s needs throughout her pregnancy until she gives birth. We’ll be monitoring her to ensure she gets the necessary medical assistance and eventually returns to school.”

He said intervention was crucial as most under-privileged children who fell pregnant at a tender age committed suicide.

Sibanda said some who had financial challenges faced health problems caused by their failure to access the necessary medical assistance.

He said it was the duty of organisations like theirs to ensure that children in the rural areas were not denied their right to education and life. The juvenile scored 13 points at Grade 7.

Added Sibanda: “Our desire is to relocate this girl and her family to Bulawayo and help her father secure a job. We’re working on achieving this because the greatest challenge that the juvenile will face in her community is stigmatisation and this will only delay the process of healing.

“We’ll be conducting more counselling sessions until hope is restored within her. We’ll be counselling her father as well so that the juvenile can have the full support of her family.”

Sibanda said during their next visit, they planned to see the family of Nleya – the man who impregnated the juvenile but avoided jailtime after Plumtree magistrate Livard Philemon gave him 315 hours of community service, crediting him for “good behaviour”.

Sibanda said although Nleya was still in early adulthood, he was now a father which required him to assume responsibility for his actions. His organisation would assist Nleya to secure a job, he said.

“We’ll engage Nleya’s family to ensure that they assume responsibility for their child’s actions. We’ll try to reconcile the two families which are now at loggerheads as the Nleya family was disgruntled after the juvenile’s father reported their son to the police,” he said.

After conducting a counselling session with the juvenile, Umuzi Wabancane administrator, Blessed Ndlovu, said the girl was emotionally troubled as she felt that she had wronged her family and community.

The teenager also felt neglected as her friends were shunning her under instruction from their parents, she added.

Ndlovu said the juvenile was also not getting the appropriate diet as her father could not afford to fend for his family.

“The girl thinks that she has wronged everyone which has left her emotionally troubled. She has to learn to forgive herself and believe that life can go on despite the mistake that she made. It’s also important that she gets the proper diet for the baby’s sake,” she said.

Ndlovu said with the right assistance, the juvenile, would be able to accept her situation and so would her family.

The girl has not received medical check-ups since she got pregnant as her father – who survives from thatching huts in the village – is struggling to raise the money while Nleya’s family is refusing to offer financial assistance.

She was impregnated by Nleya in December last year.

The teenager, who said she was unaware of the consequences of her actions, said Nleya would visit her homestead in the middle of the night and sleep in her bedroom right under her father’s nose.

Nleya would give the juvenile’s siblings some sweets to stop them from shopping their sister to their father.