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According to a Save the Children baseline research conducted in Waterloo and Kailahun, half of married girls believe that being beaten by their spouse is a gesture of love, Awoko reports.
The study titled My Body My Decision: Reducing Child, Early and Forced Marriage is funded by Global Affairs Canada and currently being implemented in Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso.
The research shows that “married adolescent girls (43.8%) and their husbands (42.3%) justified Gender-Based Violence (GBV), and the most common reasons for justifying violence were if a wife is cheating or if she argues or disobeys her husband.”
An abstract from the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice Volume: 18 states that in Sierra Leone, a polygamous society, customary law does not recognize physical or sexual wife abuse. Indeed, husbands have the right to administer “reasonable chastisement” to their wives for their misconduct.
The journal further states that actions which may bring on spousal chastisement include dereliction of domestic duties, adultery, and expressions of jealousy toward the husband’s other wives.
Physical maltreatment may include, in addition to beating, subjecting the wife to hard labor, neglecting her or failing to protect her from other wives, and neglecting the wife’s children. While the English (general) law that governs Sierra Leone criminalizes wife abuse.
While, under general law, an abused wife can request a divorce, in customary law, it is rare for women to challenge their husband on legal grounds.
The customary and general law also differ regarding marital rape, which, except under certain narrowly defined circumstances, is not recognized in tribal law. For tribal women, protection against abusive husbands is not provided by customary law, nor is it guaranteed by civil law.
