In Mali prison, many accused of infanticide

Associated Press

BAMAKO, Mali

Coumba came to Mali’s capital in search of work — and pregnant outside wedlock. Fearful of her family’s scorn, the 18-year-old did the unthinkable.

Her employer offered to take her to a hospital where she could give birth. She refused.

“When the time came for me to deliver, I went to the toilet. Then the child went into the hole and that was the end of it,” she said, speaking softly and looking down at the floor. She doesn’t say whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

Authorities arrested her after she told a friend what happened and the friend informed the police.

Here in one of the poorest countries in the world, abortion is illegal, and UNICEF estimates only 8 percent of Malian women use contraception.

Infanticide or attempted infanticide has become the most common crime after theft and assault among inmates at the prison for women and girls in this West African capital.

Earlier this month officials said 25 out of the 122 female prisoners were being held for killing or attempting to kill their children.

Most who leave infants in vacant lots, gutters or toilet pits only serve a year or two.

The offenders are mainly young women who have come to the capital from villages to take up work cooking and cleaning in families, some earning as little as $10 a month.

Jacqueline Dembele sees girls almost daily who don’t want to keep their babies. She runs Muso Danbe, an organization which supports women and girls working as domestic workers.

“Often the men around them — the man of the house, the sons or other young men — take advantage of them. They get pregnant, and then they will do anything they can to get rid of the baby,” Dembele says.

One woman Muso Danbe has helped is 18-year-old Tabita. She came to see the NGO after she says she was drugged and raped by her employer. She later found out that she was pregnant.

Muso Danbe helped place Tabita in a refuge run by Catholic nuns. She gave birth and is now doing cooking classes so she can start working with a family again or get a job in a restaurant.

“Now that I have my child, I have to stop working for at least five months. He’s just too small right now for me to work. And that’s five months of no salary,” she says.