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For Afghan women, violence remains entrenched despite gains

In this Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015 photo, a 17-year-old Afghan girl arrives for an interview with The Associated Press, in Kabul, Afghanistan. For the past year, she has lived in a shelter in Afghanistan’s capital, after escaping a lifetime of sexual abuse first by her father since the age of nine, then by a man who purported to help her. Her story is extreme, but it typifies the problem of violence against women, which activists say remains deeply entrenched in the country despite efforts at change. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)
In this Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015 photo, a 17-year-old Afghan girl arrives for an interview with The Associated Press, in Kabul, Afghanistan. For the past year, she has lived in a shelter in Afghanistan’s capital, after escaping a lifetime of sexual abuse first by her father since the age of nine, then by a man who purported to help her. Her story is extreme, but it typifies the problem of violence against women, which activists say remains deeply entrenched in the country despite efforts at change. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini) In this Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015 photo, a 17-year-old Afghan girl arrives for an interview with The Associated Press, in Kabul, Afghanistan. For the past year, she has lived in a shelter in Afghanistan’s capital, after escaping a lifetime of sexual abuse first by her father since the age of nine, then by a man who purported to help her. Her story is extreme, but it typifies the problem of violence against women, which activists say remains deeply entrenched in the country despite efforts at change. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

By Associated Press 6 min read

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – For the past year, the 17-year-old has lived in a shelter in Afghanistan’s capital, hoping for a new life away from the sexual abuse that turned her family inside out.

Her father sexually abused her from when she was nine years old and let his friends to do the same. She didn’t tell anyone, she said, because she didn’t understand what was happening to her. But any pretense of family normality imploded when medical examinations revealed that her brother was infertile and her father was also the father of her brother’s sons.

She then fled from her home village, in northern Afghanistan, and made her way to Kabul. There, she was taken in by a taxi driver and his family. But after a few days he and his friends – all heroin addicts – locked her up with three other girls and used them as sex slaves, she said.

“I came across to the same thing I was running from. Every day a new man used to come to me,” the teen told The Associated Press. The AP does not identify victims of sexual abuse. The teen said she was speaking out in hopes it would prevent abuse of others.

The girl’s story may be on the extremes of brutality, but rights workers say violence and abuse against women remains one of Afghanistan’s most deeply entrenched problems, even as the government tries to build greater rights for women. Even measuring the extent of abuse is difficult.