Violence against women the norm in Papua New Guinea

Mary Andrew endured constant beatings from her husband. Picture / Steven Nowakowski

Every time Mary Andrew's husband drank, she got a hiding. A policeman, he used his work boots to kick her in the face.

"He told me not to tell my family," recalls Mary, a petite, care-worn woman who looks far older than her 36 years. "He threatened to kill me and chop me up. I was a punching bag. I was his slave."

During an 11-year marriage, she had to turn a blind eye to his drink-fuelled womanising, an accepted part of male culture in Papua New Guinea. Mary, a mother of two, drops her gaze as she recalls, with embarrassment, how he forced her into a threesome with another woman.

When Mary's husband announced he wanted a second wife, she objected, telling him that while polygamy might be acceptable in many parts of PNG, it was against her Catholic beliefs. After delivering another fierce beating, he threw her out of their Port Moresby home.

Without a welfare system to draw on, Mary was forced to leave her two boys with their father and resort to prostitution: 20 kina ($11) for sex - maybe 50 kina ($27) if she was lucky. Some sex workers will accept bags of rice. When her husband heard, he ensured Mary was ostracised from her children.

Mary weeps as she tells her story at Poro Sapot ("peer support"), a Save the Children project that gives sex workers a place to wash, cook and rest during the day. Her oldest child, now 17, is "still supportive", she says. But Mary's former husband has kept her youngest son from her since he was 20 months old; he is now 9.

Papua New Guinea is suffering from an HIV/Aids epidemic. Physical and sexual violence against women - at all social levels - is the second epidemic, feeding the first.

Marital rape, incest and child prostitution are illegal but are distressingly common. Gang-rape by packs of "raskols", or even police, is a daily fear for women, especially in urban areas, says Dame Carol Kidu, PNG's sole female parliamentarian. However, most violence against women goes unreported, with police often indifferent.

Statistics are patchy but it is estimated that as many as 70 per cent of women are beaten by their spouses, with men condoning violence and women accepting it. In one Law Reform Commission report, 67 per cent of rural men and 57 per cent of their partners answered "yes" to the question "Is it all right for husbands to hit wives?"

At the other end of the scale, among the urban elite, 41 per cent of men and 36 per cent of women agreed. Fewer agreed that it was acceptable for wives to hit husbands.

Dame Carol, whose Moresby South electorate takes in some of the country's poorest settlements, or shanty towns, feels that violence has increased as respect has waned for the custom of bride-price. Traditionally an exchange of wealth between clans that also provided protection for women, it has become, she says, a "commercialised transaction that can turn them into mere chattels".

Other protective customs under siege, she says, include the role of senior women as peacemakers, and chaperoning of younger women. Journalist Maureen Gerawa, of the daily Post-Courier newspaper, says that perpetrators of violence "are in many cases the decision-makers holding the helm". Although PNG has human rights laws, they are not enforced.

However, in the past few months, anti-violence campaigners have taken heart from several events, among them the January jailing of parliamentarian James Yali, the Governor of Madang province, for raping the 17-year-old sister of his de facto wife.

Although there have been anti-violence marches before, one in late March in Port Moresby drew several thousand people and a wider-than-usual coalition, from grassroots groups to academic women - and the 50 members of the fledgling education group Men Against Violence.

Organisers were not surprised to see that Dame Carol was the only one of 109 MPs to march, but feel that the efforts of this broad church will finally be able to keep the issue of violence in the public eye. Strong support has also come from newagewoman, an 8-year-old, monthly Post-Courier supplement. With upfront discussions of sex, domestic violence, rape, incest and the virtues of monogamy, it is the first mainstream publication to raise issues people rarely talk about.

Donor money has also helped set up ground-breaking projects such as the 3-year-old Women and Children's Support Centre, a bright and organised office among the squalor of the rundown Angau Memorial General Hospital in Lae, PNG's second city.

Funded primarily by charity Soroptimist International, it offers trauma counselling and helps women take their attackers to court. The three-person clinic has also trained 110 anti-violence volunteers, half of them men, and sent them into PNG's remote villages to explain human rights.

"People are really hungry for information," says clinic head Anastasia Wakon. Her client list, 117 in the last six months of 2003, swelled to more than 400 last year.

Susan, from a settlement near Lae, is one of them. She was about 12 when her father started bashing and raping her, her mother not only aware but occasionally involved. As Susan matured, her parents ensured she was virtually housebound.

She escaped by marrying, against her parents' will, at 28, very late in a country where teen marriages are common. Although her husband was kind, Susan kept her past secret until just after delivering her fourth child, when she broke down and told him about her past.

The couple had counselling at the clinic. Staff helped them liaise with sympathetic members of the police and kept Susan on track when she came under family pressure to drop the charges.

Her father is now in jail, awaiting trial. This, says Ms Wakon, is a success story. For hundreds of thousands of PNG's women, she adds, there is little respite.

* Julie Middleton travelled to PNG courtesy of the Asia Pacific Alliance, a development network.