Cursed for the Sins of Her Father
GULU, UGANDA--Little Mercy Aloyoto has the face of her mother, a fetching first-year student at Saint Monica's School for Tailoring, and the eyes of her father, one of the planet's most hated war criminals.
Mercy is one of at least a dozen children in Uganda fathered by Joseph Kony, the ruthless leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. The children "are the spitting image of Kony," says Father Carlos Rodriguez, a Spanish Roman Catholic missionary who's spent 20 years in northern Uganda. Their mothers, like hundreds of abducted girls, braved death and mutilation to escape, only to be scorned as the wives and mistresses of killers. "It's a big problem," says Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, who shelters several of Kony's former "wives" and children. "They were taken when they were quite young. Now they are told, 'You are carrying the child of a murderer.'"
For these young women, the reality of rejection--and the fear of revenge--are constant. Their experience is a unique example of the challenges faced by thousands of former abductees trying to build lives in the communities victimized by Kony's forces. For many, there is no going home. "My own parents, they rejected me," says Burhan Nasur, who spent six years with the LRA after his abduction in 1996. Most former rebels are destitute. As more trickle out of the jungle, "they will absolutely be a source of insecurity," says peace negotiator Betty Bigombe. At the same time, "you can't appear to be rewarding them."
Mercy's mother, Evelyn Amony, says she was kidnapped at 12 and first raped by Kony at 15. "It was no choice, to like him or not," she says. She bore him three girls before escaping in 2004. Now, strangers point and glare. "Even if he is dead, people will identify me as his wife. I don't like it. But that's the reality."
In the blighted north, it's said that every family has been victimized by the insurgency and that every family has a member who's taken part. "It will take a generation before society will not have guilt within itself, will not have suspicion within itself," says Emmanuel Ochoro, a youth leader in Gulu. An intimate conflict will remain so.
This story appears in the May 8, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.