The Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), a civil society group based in Juba, has published a report saying that rape victims in South Sudan are often forced to marry the men who raped them and pointing out weaknesses in the legal system.

CEPO's new report is titled “Review of Legal Response to Rape” and covers the period 2013-2014 in South Sudan. The civil society group described its research as a “small-scale survey” carried out as part of its “ regular engagement on tracking cases of Sexual Gender Based violence.”

The research paper said that rural families often treat talk of rape as taboo. “Rape is a forceful manner of winning love. It is this concept in the rural communities that makes rape case to end in marriage.”

“There is evidence in the media that majority of the families end up facilitating rape case into marriage,” the report says.

For example, CEPO cited a radio report from Yei in 2014 headlined, “Gender officer accuses parents of settling rape cases for money” and another radio report from Torit in 2013 headlined, “Police blames parents for settling child sexual crimes.”

CEPO noted that the “weak family role in securing evidence and treating rape as taboo” has contributed to weak and delayed investigation of cases by police. One of the principal findings of the research is that the public is not well informed about how to deal with rape cases when they occur.

Poverty also plays a role: “Poverty has made parents to solve rape cases at family level where they negotiate for dowry and such cases end up in marriage simply the parent of the girls want cash due to poverty. Marriage that are connected to occurrence of rape cases end up as early and forced marriage.”

The full report can be downloaded at the link below: