Vestine Mugwaneza has been married twice within a space of 12 years. But her first marriage, which lasted five years, was one she will never forget.

At a tender age of 18, she was married off to a 39-year-old man in her native Nyamagabe District after she dropped out of school due to lack of school fees.

At this age, Mugwaneza says didn’t know much about sex. She was a virgin. Upon getting married, each day that passed, her husband’s demands for sex increased, to a point where the subject of sex began to traumatise her.

"He would go out and drink all night and return in the wee hours of the morning reeking of alcohol, and the first thing he would do would be to demand sex. I started feeling uncomfortable with the whole thing and resisted his advances every time he tried.

"He started being violent, saying that he paid dowry for me to be his wife, to meet his sexual desires and that if I wasn’t doing that, he was going to marry another woman,” recalls Mugwaneza.

Mugwaneza says that he lacked intimacy and always wanted to force things, which made her even more disinterested in sex.

When the tormenting became too much, she confided in her mother about her ordeal but her mother told her that it is her duty to meet her husband’s sexual demands, whether she is in the right mood or not.

It came as a shock to Mugwaneza because her mother seemed to put the blame on her instead of understanding her predicament.

As time went on, her husband’s pressure increased, even when she was pregnant with their first child.

"I was heavy, sickly and not interested in sex at all but he would not understand. In the middle of the night, he would force himself on me and I didn’t have the energy to push him away. Every time he would go out to drink, I would expect him to come back and force himself on me,” she says.

As time went on, the more violent he became and she was so tormented that she accepted her situation.

One time, while attending a session organised by the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion and Isange One Stop Centre on Gender-based Violence in Nyamagabe district, she got to learn about marital rape and understood how it consists a crime.

According to law Nº68/2018 of 30/08/2018 determining offences and penalties in general, in its Article 137, the crime of sexual violence against a spouse carries a penalty of imprisonment ranging between three years and five years. It applies equally to the offender regardless of sex or gender.

Until 2012, the law categorically mentioned ‘marital rape’ but under the 2018 revised law, it is described as sexual violence against a spouse.

When Mugwaneza heard about the law, she informed the husband and the situation became even worse.

"He began to openly torture me and rape me almost every night, daring me to go and report him. Every time I talked to an elder, they often told me ‘niko zubakwa’ (it is how homes are built), urging me to hang in there or cooperate with him,” she recalls.

Alone and dejected

On top of forcing her into sexual intercourse, he began beating her up and meting all sorts of violence on her, daring her to report to authorities or return the dowry.

"I saw my husband turn into a monster each day,” recalls Mugwaneza, adding that to make matters worse, he got a concubine in a nearby trading centre where he would spend most of the time and return only when drunk and ready to harangue her and her child.

"I turned into a laughing stock in the whole village, people referring to me as the woman who could not handle marriage. Nobody was listening to my side of the story,” she says.

She felt alone and dejected, with a problem nobody was willing to understand. In 2017, she was advised by a friend to relocate from Nyamagabe and move to Kigali where she would find work and fend for herself and her daughter.

Life was not easy, with no education and everything she had worked for left behind in Nyamagabe. She had to start from scratch.

One day a neighbour advised her to formally file for divorce since she had a valid reason, so that she could free herself.

With no resources, Mugwaneza got support from a local NGO which gave her legal services pro bono. Marital rape was enough grounds for her to secure divorce and also got her share of the property to start a new life in Kigali.

She was able to pick up her life, putting her trauma behind and even remarried someone who truly loved her. It is then that she realised the hell she had been put through by her former husband.

Mugwaneza’s story is one shared by many women in Rwanda, yet the subject of conjugal rape remains a sensitive one that is not talked about, mainly because it is entrenched in the ‘niko zubakwa’ traditional belief which urges women, especially, to be resilient in their marriages regardless of what they go through.

The 2019-2020 Rwanda Demographic Health Survey reported that 14 per cent of women were physically forced to have sexual intercourse, 8 per cent were physically forced to perform other sexual acts, and 7 per cent were forced with threats or in any other way to perform sexual acts.

Several couples approached by The New Times were not willing to discuss the subject of conjugal rape, which in a way goes to explain the sensitivity of the issue.

A prosecutor at the national level, who spoke to this publication on condition of anonymity, said that majority of married couples become hesitant to report marital rape cases due to how complex it is, yet the law is very clear.

"The law is categorical on what entails sexual violence meted out on your spouse but sometimes we have people withdrawing cases due to how intricate they are,” she explained.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a coalition of four local NGOs, which pushed for the harmonisation of the law, to make marital rape considered as any other form of rape, argued that a more punitive sentence would help to end the silent vice destroying lives and families.

Article 133 on rape states that any person who is convicted of rape shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years and not more than 15 years, and a fine of not less than one million Rwandan Francs (Rwf1m) and not more than two million Rwandan Francs (Rwf2m).

The article further states that if the act of rape is committed among spouses, it shall also be considered to be rape, hence making no distinction of the crime.

During the debate to amend the law in 2018, Member of Parliament Theoneste Karenzi, who supported the changes, argued that sex is a reflection of the intimacy of the spouse in a marriage and must be consensual. If not, it is considered rape.

"Rape is rape irrespective of the relationships and should be punished as such,” Karenzi said, backing strong provisions in the law that would save many people who are quietly experiencing the ‘hell’ that is conjugal rape.

Men too, suffer

However, marital rape is mostly, but not exclusively, experienced by women. Men too, experience marital rape and even worse, but they don’t speak out about it at all for fear of being laughed at.

Egide (second name withheld on request) says that in 2015, he experienced what he could term as marital rape on several occasions, where his inebriated wife would force him to engage in intercourse at the time when he was battling serious injuries from an accident.

"I had never given it a thought but looking back, I can say it was marital rape because it was not consensual. I was focussing on recovering from the life-threatening situation but she would continuously taunt me, accusing me of failing to fulfil my manly duties,” he says.

Eventually, the couple divorced due to irreconcilable differences and it is during the phase that Egide realised how most of their sexual encounters were not consensual but an order to fulfil his "manly duties.”

Unreported cases

According to Thierry Murangira, the Spokesperson of Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), sexual violence against a spouse is a serious crime under the law but one of the challenges remains that people don’t openly report it.

"The common trend we see is that people come to report other cases relating to gender-based and domestic violence, or financial misunderstandings in a marriage and then along the way sexual violence against a spouse comes up,” he said.

Once reported, Murangira said sexual violence against a spouse is investigated like any other rape case because "rape is rape.” However, what is clear is that these cases are underreported.

Murangira encourages people to report sexual violence against a spouse to Isange One-Stop Centre which has the capacity to test, record and offer other services.

"When these cases are reported, it becomes easy for us to follow up. That is why the Isange One-Stop Centre was established,” he said.

Statistics shared by RIB show that there has been a 50 per cent decline in cases related to sexual violence against a spouse for the period 2021- 2022 compared to the last two years.

The numbers further show that cases of sexual violence against a spouse increased during the period 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021 respectively, the period which was characterised by the Covid-19 pandemic which kept people in their homes.

Another leading cause for marital rape is alcoholism. In Huye for example, a story aired by a local television recently showed that women in the Southern Province district raised a concern of husbands who overdrink and return in the night demanding for sex.

"When he returns in the night, he asks for sex forcefully without initiating it. He forces himself on me, when I try to get in the mood, he lasts a very short time since he is too drunk, which frustrates me more,” said one of the women interviewed.

Experts say conjugal rape tends to form a vicious cycle of abusive actions between couples, eventually becoming a routine or accepted practice, in the process perpetuating chronic violence.

Innocent Muramira, a Kigali-based lawyer says that it is not right for couples to have forced sex against each other’s consent.

"Married couples should consent before having any sexual affair because as the law states, marriage is a contract therefore it is prudent for both parties to act in good faith but not to coerce or put others on stress because they need to have sex.

"It is also clear that prosecuting cases of such nature may not yield much success due to no or limited evidence that is likely to be produced by parties to competent authorities in order to build a strong case against culprits,” says Muramira.

A Journal of Psychosexual Health published earlier this year indicates that marital rape is mostly entrenched by sociocultural and political ideologies, including interpretations of the institution of marriage which is mainly influenced by culture and religion.