3.6. WHEN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IS DISGUISED AS CULTURE/RELIGION: Tinashe’s STORY A major challenge when dealing with child sexual abuse has been the conflict of laws between civil law and customary law. Under current law, a child below the age of 12 years is 1 deemed to be incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse. For children between the ages of 12 and 14 the law provides the offender with a possible defence that the minor child was capable of consenting and in fact did consent to the conduct complained of.1 This was meant to deal with situations where young people may enter into sexual relationships, but recognizing that they may lack the intellectual maturity to make decisions or to realize the implications of their decisions and actions, the law sought to discourage sexual relationships with young people. An added complication arises from the marriage law regime under which in terms of civil law, a girl is allowed to marry when she reaches the age of 16,1 but where customary law does not set a lower age limit. The result is that people have exploited this shortcoming in customary law to marry off children as young as 12 or 13 years old. The entire legal regime needs to be harmonized and brought into compliance with the new Constitution, but while this remains undone, cases of forced child marriage such as that captured in the story below continue to happen. Tinashe Gatsi was born at Murahwa Village, Buhera on the st 21 of June 1993. She says her family belongs to the Johanne Marange Apostolic Sect. Among other beliefs, the sect discourages their followers from accessing modern health care facilities; education beyond a certain level is discouraged while children are married off at a very young age. Polygamy is also common among the sect. Tinashe’s mother, Upenyu Murambi was a second wife to her father, Mateo Gatsi who had 3 wives. Tinashe is the first born in a family of six children born to her mother. Tinashe went to school until Grade 7 when her father told her that he no longer had money to pay for her to continue with her education. Talking to Tinashe she says that this was just an excuse to stop her going to school and marry her off as her father had the resources to continue paying school fees for her. Shortly after this, Tinashe was married off to Tongai, a man at least 40 years older than her. In recent court papers, Tongai revealed that he turned 67 in 2014. In July 2006, when Tinashe was 14 years her family went for a church conference. The conference was for 18 days. While preparing for the conference her mother told her to pack her clothes as during the conference someone would come to take her to their home. Tinashe recalled how two women came and collected her from the conference. They were Tongai’s first wife and Tongai’s sister. Tinashe recalled that her mother did not say anything. They proceeded to Tongai’s homestead and that evening, Tongai’s wife ordered her to prepare some bedding in the kitchen, to take off her clothes and then to wait as someone would be coming. Tinashe did as instructed and that night Tongai came and had sexual intercourse with her. Tinashe recalled how she cried but that Tongai responded by ordering her not to cry as she was now his wife and from then on, she was now expected to do her duties as his wife. From this day onwards, Tinashe became Tongai’s fourth wife, at barely 14 years of age. She had not even started her menses, when Tongai first raped her. Recalling what had happened before this conference when she became Tongai’s wife, Tinashe recalled that her father had been given 5 head of cattle as Tinashe’s bride price. 26 22