PROTECTING OUR GIRLS

This drama touches on several layers of issues in the topic of rape, sex, assault and child abuse.

One layer is the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children—especially girls—safe. This may seem obvious, but the lack of awareness of many people to the problem is frightening. When a child is raped, hands are wrung and the talk comes round to, “this child/family is cursed”. The sense that this should have been avoided by acknowledging the problem and taking preventative action is absent.

The attitude of denial of the problem of sexual abuse is compounded by the taboo of talking about sex. This is a taboo that these parents have broken early on. They have been talking about sex to their children in an age appropriate way for years.

However, because of appalling events in their community they are forced to discuss specifics with their youngest child much sooner than they wanted. (Hannah is about four or five years old.)

The reluctance to use the accurate terminology for body parts is another taboo which I tried to tackle in the drama. However, my African advisers said that no one is ready for that. So I changed the words to “the husband’s private parts” and “the wife’s private parts”.

The dynamic of dealing with discipline when angry is another sub-theme. The parents are frightened for Hannah and father is ready to “beat” her for disobeying. Mother seems calm, but when Hannah shows up she goes to pieces too. But they both talk to her and get her side of the story.

The family is also dealing with the increasing dementia of the grandparents.