police work

Our police tend to sit in their office and wait for crime to come to them.  But a couple of good things have happened this week.  Note, this is not a kid-friendly post, even though it's about kids . . . so don't read it if you don't want to hear.

First, the rapist from the weekend was truly transferred yesterday to Bundibugyo, and will be appearing in court tomorrow.  So far, that case, very public, has not been dropped.  And that encouraged Heidi and I to follow up on our case from last summer, the little six year old girl Heidi called Miss Polkadots who was grabbed in her garden and held down and raped while her siblings ran home crying.  Though we had pushed and pushed for the police to find and arrest the perpetrator most of June and July, he ran away, or so we were told.  Now that six months had gone by we figured his guard might be down.  And we have a couple of new officers posted here, so it was worth a try.  Sure enough, they raided this morning, and brought the man in.  I went to the station myself, and have to say that the satisfaction was hollow, I was prepared to hate this man with righteous wrath, and instead I felt sorry for him.  The man is ill, younger than I thought, pitiful, sitting shirtless and handcuffed on the floor, looking terrified.  I talked to him a little, seems he just had an abscess drained on his back and his wife just delivered a baby girl.  He has the right name, right village, right history of being in the UPDF, and the police are convinced (in a sort of circular reasoning way) that he is the guilty party because they arrested him.  I just felt sobered by the responsibility of having his blood to account for if we're wrong.  Still out of loyalty to Miss Polkadots and little girls everywhere, I agreed to drive him with an armed guard to Bundibugyo town.  They located his file, but not the key for the handcuffs.  He'll be examined at the hospital, and then taken to court too.  The half-dozen other shirtless young men behind bars begged me for money.  I tried to talk to them about using this time in their lives to pray because God if forgiving.  I don't think they were convinced.  I thought of Jesus talking to his cross-mates.  Bundibugyo jail is a pretty barren place.

Meanwhile, some Baptist missionaries we met a couple of months ago are back doing a seminar in our Community Center for teachers and church leaders, sensitizing them to Ugandan law and childrens' rights.  Great topic, great timing.  And today's national paper carried two gruesome stories of ritual murder to obtain body parts for witchcraft.  We think that both rape cases were related to the devil-inspired-hope that an HIV-positive man can be cured by sex with a virgin.  Evil abounds, but there are people standing up, journalists and lawyers, policemen and doctors, saying "no further".  Let us pray.