uring
the recent civil war, some 6,000 children, aged 4 to 14, were forced into armed
conflict.
After the peace agreement, 3,000 of these were entrusted to Caritas of Sierra Leone. The Xaverian Missionaries have assumed the task of bringing them back to their roots, re-inserting them into their native villages. When parents cannot be found, the children are given in trust to willing families, where the sense of the enlarged extended family is still strong.
The transition back to civilian and community life, however, is often traumatic, and for some impossible, because “they are still living in a kind of madness,” says Fr. Joseph Berton, director of the St. Michael Lakka Center, a transition home for the young former fighters. These children, often under the influence of drugs, were made to commit atrocities against their own relatives and villagers. 12-year old Andrew, for example, who is presently at the Center, says that he was never scared of going into battle because his commander gave him cocaine. And he shows a round scar the size of a quarter on his right arm. “This is where they put the cocaine into my body. A knife or a blade, they cut around your flesh, and they put it inside and seal it with plaster. After injection, you just feel to do any bad thing. You become wounded man.”
The
Center holds about 400 children at one time, looked after by a staff of 100,
including two Xaverian priests, Fr. Berton and Fr. Chema Caballero, and Xaverian
Sister Adriana Marsili.
Bishop Biguzzi also calls attention to a worse situation: “It’s the situation of the girls; they have been reduced to sex-slaves. They were repeatedly and mercilessly violated and, in many instances, have given birth to children. Often they and their children have contracted all sorts of diseases. In the next few years AIDS will spread rapidly. And Sierra Leone is not up to meeting the onslaught.”
“Unless there is a serious commitment to the recovery, rehabilitation and education of these children – affirms Fr. Berton – child soldiers of today will be left to become bandits of tomorrow… Unless we commit ourselves to them today, tomorrow these children will rise up again us for our neglect.”
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)