Ugandan woman jailed for feeding stepdaughter menstrual blood

It takes a lot of courage to sit by and watch another human ingest your blood because your end goal is to see them go mad.

Annet Namata did not have any problem watching her teenage daughter eat eggplant sauce infused with her menstrual blood. She claims a friend advised her to do that because it will eventually make the teenager a lunatic, Daily Monitor reports.

Medical study shows that consuming menstrual blood is potentially detrimental to one’s health because one can get infected with bloodborne pathogens like HIV, Maravi Post reveals.

Narrating the incident to The Observer, Usunu Lungu, Annet’s husband, said his wife took the blood from a bucket and mixed it with the food for his daughter.

“She mixed the blood with the sauce made of eggplants. She forced the teenager to eat it threatening her that she would strangle her and vanish. So, I asked her to eat the food herself and that is when she confessed and said that indeed the food contained menstrual blood. But she blamed the daughter as the one who went and removed the blood from her knickers and added it to the food so she could not be blamed.”

Lungu probed into the matter when his neighbours came to the aid of his daughter as she was vomiting outside their home. At the time, Annet had gone grasshopper trapping after threatening the girl to ingest the ‘bloody’ sauce.

According to Daily Monitor, the neighbours then gave the girl warm water to rinse her mouth and as a form of first aid, they also gave her garlic and charcoal powder to swallow.

Namata pleaded guilty to the act after being cajoled by the village council leaders. Lungu put the case before the village leaders who assessed the incident and handed it over to the police.

A representative of the women council, Sarah Namawejje, said the defendant told her that her husband “loved his daughter so much to the point of even beating her in case she annoyed him. Every nice thing my husband was giving it to her.”

Sarah enquired further at the council hearing whether she indeed fed her stepdaughter menstrual blood. She admitted and said ‘yes’, adding that a friend advised her to give the teenager blood which could make the girl mad. Annet then asked for forgiveness from her husband and the council.

After her hearing in a Ugandan magistrate court in Mukono, Annet was sentenced to two years in jail for pleading guilty to the charges. The sentence for such acts, according to law, is seven years. However, Magistrate Patience Koburunga reduced the length of the sentence because the defendant pleaded guilty right away and saved the court time, the Monitor reports.

Section 171 of the penal code stipulates that “Any person who unlawfully or negligently does any act which is and which he or she knows or has reason to believe to be likely to spread the infection of any disease dangerous to life commits an offence and is liable to imprisonment for seven years.”

Annet also asked for clemency because she is a mother of three children and a longer sentence would keep her away from the children for a longer period.

However, her husband Lungu and some of his neighbours are displeased with the verdict. Lungu wanted his wife to serve a longer time so she could be properly reformed upon her release.

Susan, the village’s women representative, also felt the judgement was light and does not serve as a strong deterrent to other women who might want to engage in a similar act.

“That sentence will only encourage other women to do the same thing knowing their sentences will be heavy could be made light.”

She also urged women to treat their stepchildren with love because no one is certain how their future would turn out.

The teenager is being treated by the Child and Family Protection Unit to repair any psychological trauma this ordeal might have caused her.