Six months ago, both Robert’s legs were paralysed and he had only limited use of one of his arms. The ten-year-old Ugandan boy had sustained crippling spinal injuries in a violent attack. And those who found him, lying in a pool of blood behind his grandmother’s house, believe the assault was the work of ‘witch doctors’.
Accusations of witchcraft, sorcery and child sacrifice have, in recent years, become more common in Uganda.
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“The practice is unlawful,” says Rodney Callanan from Droplets in a Stream, the Australian charity that brought Robert to Australia. “But due to poverty, ignorance and fear, it is persisting. People are led to believe that, if they sacrifice a child, their businesses will prosper or their health will improve.”
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Traditional healers, shamen and herbalists still operate in Uganda but these, Rodney says, are not the perpetrators.
“They’re sham witch doctors,” he says. “They are doing this for financial gain and the majority of their victims die.”
The scale of the problem is unclear, with conflicting reports by government departments, aid agencies, church groups and academics, who believe reports of child sacrifice have been exaggerated. All agree, however, that the attack on Robert was horrific and he was lucky to survive.
Now, thanks to Droplets in the Stream and an extraordinary team of doctors, nurses and physiotherapists at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, he is not only surviving, he is learning to walk again.
“He’s a very patient, courageous boy,” says Barbra Nambooze, his carer, speaking exclusively in this month’s Women’s Weekly.
“And he is working very hard,” says Dr Sandeep Tewari, the paediatric orthopaedic surgeon who operated on Robert. He has just seen him take his first steps.
To learn more about Robert’s story, pick up the October issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now.
