Aboke Abductions - Aftermath

Aftermath

Five of the thirty girls died in captivity and of the remainder all but two eventually made their escape by 2006. Soon after the abduction, a girl named Jennifer went missing. When she was found hiding in a hut, the rebels dragged her into the open and ordered the others to beat her to death. The girls hit her lightly at first, but then the rebels surrounded the group and beat anyone who was not hitting Jennifer hard. Afterwards the LRA rebels left the corpse in the open and beat those who wept, both as an object lesson about attempting to escape and as a way to break the social ties between the girls.

Of the fates of the thirty, the death of Judith, the head girl, is notable for its brutality. It is Sr. Rachele's belief that her request of Judith that she look after the others led her to do something that annoyed the rebels. One evening, Judith and another girl from the group of other captives, Caterina, had their hands bound behind their backs and were attacked with sticks, bicycle chains and machetes. Caterina died of her wounds the following morning, but Judith was still alive 24 hours later and asked for water. The rebels instead dragged her into the forest and tied her to a tree. A group of captives gathering firewood found her body a week later but the body had not started decomposing, indicating that she had not been dead for long. After a week of walking, the girls were brought north to Kony's base in Southern Sudan where they were given to various commanders as "wives".

Sr. Rachele and the parents of the remaining abducted children formed the Concerned Parents Association (CPA) to raise awareness of the abductions and work for the children to be returned. In the course of their advocacy, the tale of the Aboke girls became one of the most widely known horror stories of the entire conflict. The CPA appealed to Pope John Paul II, who condemned the abductions, therefore drawing international attention to the incident and the situation in northern Uganda in general.

On 7 March 1997, President Museveni wrote to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan describing the plight of the Aboke girls. In June 1997, Sr. Rachele and members of the CPA met with LRA commanders in Juba, Sudan. After originally denying that they held the girls, they then said they would release them if the Ugandan military declared a ceasefire. The Ugandan government rejected the proposal and stated that they were not responsible for anything that may happen to the girls.

One of the most active CPA members has been Angelina Atyam, mother of Aboke girl Charlotte. Sr. Rachele and Ms. Atyam have, between the two of them, met the UN Special representative for children and armed conflicts, Olara Otunnu, then-U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton, Kofi Annan, Yoweri Museveni, the Pope, members of the European Parliament, former South African President Nelson Mandela, Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddafi, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, as well as numerous diplomats of other nations.

The Lord's Resistance Army continues to operate in Uganda, as well as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, attacking civilians and abducting youth. While the profile of the conflict has been raised since a 2002 government offensive into southern Sudan, a 2005 poll of humanitarian aid professionals named it to be the second most "forgotten" humanitarian emergency in the world. The leaders of the LRA were indicted in 2005 for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, though others note that the indictments complicate the sporadic attempts at negotiations. A 2006 study estimated that 66,000 children and youth had been abducted over the course of the 20-year conflict.

On March 14, 2009, Catherine Ajok, the last of the abducted Aboke girls still held by the rebels, returned to Uganda. Ajok escaped during the Garamba offensive against the LRA, and made her way to a UPDF base in Dungu in DRC Congo. She returned with her 21-month-old baby, whom she said was fathered by Joseph Kony.