Contrary to the Gender Acts enacted in June 2007 people still continue to violate it. In an interview with a Social Development Officer at the Waterloo District Council Alice Bangura, she narrated how she has just rescued a Sierra Leonean girl (name withheld) from forceful marriage in Guinea.
She said when the rebel was at its peak the girl who was then two years -old was adopted in the Godama refugee camp in Bo one Neneh Galleh and she was taken to Kindia in Guinea to stay with her adopted parent. She grew up into adolescence; little realizing that she was being nurtured to be married to her adopted brother.
At age 15 last year the girl according to the Social Development Officer Alice Bangura, was approached on several occasions by her adopted mother to marry her son but she refused and explained that she was still a teenager and also considers the man as her elder brother.
After persistent fruitless efforts by the adopted mother and some residents in Kindia to force her into premature marriage it was decided that she should be returned to Sierra Leone to trace her biological parents to which the girl consented.
On this note, the girl was brought back to Sierra Leone by her adopted mother and abandoned her at the Family Support Unit at the Waterloo Police Station where the Social Development Officer Alice Bangura picked her up towards the end of last year and she wasted no time in informing her office which facilitated her trip to Guinea together with the girl to gather relevant information about the girl’s parents.
She confirmed that she left Freetown early this year for Kindia in Guinea where she was assisted by the Sierra Leone Embassy in Guinea to trace the whereabouts of the adopted mother in Kindia who furnished her with all the relevant information regarding the girl’s biological parents in Sierra Leone. On her return to Sierra Leone Alice Bangura boasted that she was able to trace and united the girl with her biological mother in the person of one Jeneba Jalloh and other family members at the Kroobay Community in Freetown.