By Adama Makasuba
Haddy Mboge-Barrow a retired nurse and gender activist has said the prosecution of sexual offenders should be fast track in order to avoid discouraging victims’ in taken up such case to the law and minimize the economics cost on them (victims’).
Mrs. Mboge-Barrow, 61, was testifying before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission on Tuesday which began public hearings on Jammeh’s regime sexual and gender based violence on Monday.
“When we come to the prosecution department, the investigation will go on and on. Sometimes if a case is reported, the investigations will take two to three years before the investigation and prosecution of that case will be completed and a before a decision is made takes a very long period,” she said.
As she continued pointing out the challenges faced with victims’ of sexual and gender based violence, Mrs. Mboge-Barrow who also worked for the Network against Gender Base Violence, said police stations in the country are not gender friendly for people who are victims of the gender base violence.
She added: “our police stations are not gender friendly. When you go to the police station reporting about gender violence is an open place which very difficult to even narrates what had happened to you” and called on the authorities to consider having in place police stations which would be gender friendly, adding that many people wouldn’t be willing to discuss their ordeals in public.
She said the challenges faced with the hospitals includes lack of facilities to record the critical evidences of gender based violence and provide efficiency laboratory for recording DNA test as evidences in a court of law.
She urged for the rejection of prolonged trial case of gender based violence as she said” somebody whose right has been violated and you asking that person come today, come tomorrow that has an economic cost to that particular person.”
She said according Gambia Bureau of Statistics health survey reports, 41 percent of women between the ages of 15 years to 49 have one time in their life encountered sexual violence in which 5 percent of those women had been physically violated.