In an exclusive interview with Sunday News in Bulawayo on
Friday, the girl’s mother (26) who cannot be named for professional reasons,
revealed that her daughter started her monthly menstrual cycle when she was
just seven years-old in 2020. As the distraught mother opened up on the
incident, it also emerged that the father of the child allegedly told her that
“goblins will visit her at night and insert something in her private parts.”
The father (29) was arrested on 29 August 2022 when it was
discovered that the minor was pregnant and is assisting police with
investigations. The goblins that the father forewarned his daughter about, are
alleged to have visited the nine-year-old only on nights that her mother was
away from home and was left in the care of her father. So broken was the mother
that she turned down an invitation to visit her daughter on Friday. She chose
to walk away and sit in the foyer of the safe house than to go to the room
where her daughter is being taken care of. She said she could not stand seeing
her daughter in that state.
“She does not know what is wrong with her, that she is
pregnant. The last time I saw her she asked me if I would take her home once
she heals from her sickness, as that is what she knows. I started to see her
menstruating in 2020 and she was seven years old then and I took her to the
clinic to find out what the cause could have been. They told me that it was
possible for her to menstruate early owing to the foods children eat nowadays.
We returned home, then this year (August), I noticed that her stomach was
swelling and took her to the hospital once more and there it was discovered
that she was pregnant. I was not expecting that she could be pregnant because
it is actually a shock and something foreign to us that a nine-year-old child
can fall pregnant.”
Asked on whether she had been informed by her daughter of
the sexual abuse she was going through, she said no.
“She never said anything, we tried to ask her about what
happened to her but she wouldn’t talk, up to now. I am in pain because I do not
know what happened to my daughter. My family is also distraught over the
matter. I am just scared for her and what will happen since she is so young and
pregnant. I never saw any behavioural changes in her such that I never picked
up that she was probably being abused. She remained the same child until we
discovered she was pregnant. She was also attending school from the beginning
of this year but she had a tendency of not getting to school on some days and
would return home and say she was chased away from school,” she said. Sunday
News
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