Defilement in Uganda is horrifically normal. These two public twitter conversations should chill you.

A few days ago I came across a tweet where someone accused a man of sleeping with a 17-year-old during her periods and called it rape. Technically it’s statutory rape and defilement but the term ‘rape’ is what set the accused and his friends off.

Oh yeah. While they claimed two days later that evidence had been brought to light proving their beloved’s innocence, it is their reactions before that ‘evidence’-which no one’s really seen yet-that sent shivers down my spine.

First, his lady friend wrote down a long diatribe about the morality of teenagers today. How her friend is being attacked unfairly because “you know that even 15-year-olds are loose and fornicate. There are always two sides to a story”.

I don’t care if a 13-year-old draped herself naked around your doorstep. You can’t play the ‘she wanted it’ card. She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s a kid. If you show up ten years later when she’s not a kid anymore, she WILL see you for the predator that you are because she as an adult will not sleep with a 15-year-old boy.

Anyway. This is how our man responded.

The more people got involved, the more he withdrew from his casual stance and begun demanding for his rights to be respected. He flung the law of cyber harassment at us. Ssebo, you and your lady friend all but tweeted your guilt IN A PUBLIC SETTING and our response is harassment to you? I guess you didn’t think it was ‘that serious’.

It is that serious. I personally will remember this man and his lady friend who slut-shamed every girl ever defiled and then called herself a Christian.

Pictures speak louder than words. So I’m just going to post two in quick succession.

It would appear that defilement is an act that can be blamed on a girl for being hormonal, being naive, being innocent and being plain ignorant because she hasn’t lived as long as the predators discussing her as Blackman and his followers did.

This normality? How is it tolerated? With our defilement rates and teenage pregnancy rates, how do we allow men and women to go on twitter and discuss defiling girls, and slut-shaming teenagers they’ve defiled with confidence?

We are a sick sick society, offering refuge to rapists and pedophiles. Offering ‘understanding’ and ‘extenuating circumstances’. Trying to threaten anyone who goes, ‘Hang on, this isn’t right’. The audacity to THREATEN anyone who says ‘this is a worrying conversation’.

This is not the Uganda our children deserve. And people like this need to be addressed with the seriousness they deserve because the police reports indicate that taking the issue lightly is destroying the lives and futures of young girls.

Call them out. Shut the conversation down. And to you men and women who talk like this-the internet never forgets. If you were my relative I would not allow my teenager anywhere near you. One day you will be job hunting, and you will realize how black a mark making jokes about defiling girls is.

Call them out. It may be your daughter or niece they’re talking about.

By Lindsey Kukunda