When Honorine Munyole visits a group of local women in the city of Bukavu, the police officer gets a welcome fit for a hero.
But the celebrations turn to cries of despair and even anger when she makes her announcement – she is to be redeployed to another location.
“Who will look after our children now?” asks one mother. Another thrusts her daughter to the front of the throng: the child looks no older than three. She tells the gathering how the infant was pulled through a window at night and raped by a gang of men. “Mama, if you leave who is going to help us?” she says.
One woman, resigned to the news, makes a desperate plea: “Take my girl with you. At least she will be safe.”
It would not be the first time Munyole, a widow, has adopted a vulnerable child. In addition to her four biological children she has rescued three babies and raised them as her own. Each carries their own traumatic backstory.
Munyole is revered as a lone figure in the fight against abuse of women and children. Her specialist police role is a lifeline to this community in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a hotbed of abuse and sexual violence where children are accused of witchcraft and war widows scarred by rape.
It is her compassion in the face of such hardship that has earned her the moniker Mama Colonel, also now the title of an observational documentary by Kisangani-born director Dieudo Hamadi, which aired at the Sheffield Documentary Festival this month.
Munyole left Bukavu to head a police unit dedicated to the protection of women and children in Kisangani, DRC’s third largest city. The posting has left her facing a daily struggle to mobilise her male-dominated workforce and change the ingrained attitudes of a broken social order.
In Kisangani, she makes an address to local people: “Children here are really mistreated. You are abandoning them. You are accusing them of witchcraft, you are hitting them. I warn you, if I come across someone, man or woman, they will regret what they have done.”
Last week it was reported that thousands of minors are held in churches throughout DRC in operations aimed at exorcising them of “demons”. Poverty-stricken families are increasingly using accusations of sorcery as a reason to abandon their children.
Munyole and her team raided a house where seven young children accused of witchcraft had been held captive for nearly two months. A man clutching a Bible was arrested as the youngsters told how they had been beaten and half-starved. At the police station a female detainee claimed they were trying to rid the children of evil spirits.
Oladapo Awosokanre, programmes manager with the charity Afruca, says children displaying “odd” behaviours such as bedwetting or sleepwalking, or young people with a disability, are often singled out and branded witches.
“It’s a growing concern in east Africa and there has also been an increase in cases here in the UK. Often when there has been a misfortune in the family, so-called faith leaders will point to children as the cause,” he says.
“Fake spiritual leaders are accusing children of being possessed before extorting money from the distressed families as payment to exorcise the ‘evil spirits’.”
Munyole says accusations of witchcraft are rife in Kisangani. “Children become scapegoats for family problems. When there is nothing to eat they will blame the kids. Many are killed or end up living on the streets.
“Without shelter at night they fall prey to sexual violence and they are not attending school – there is no escape route.”
In urging the locals to stamp out child abuse and report rape, Munyole finds a community still reeling from the horrific six-day war in Kisangani in June 2000.
The conflict on Congolese soil between Rwandan and Ugandan troops led to 1,000 civilian deaths with a further 3,000 people wounded. Munyole, in her new role, is one of the first to ask people about what they suffered. Scores of widows come forward and break their silence for the first time. One 44-year-old woman reveals she was raped in front of her husband before he was murdered and her daughter abducted. She has had no news of the child since.
Another widow describes being tied up and raped. “Then they killed my husband, my children. Their throats were cut,” she says.
Munyole offers many of the victims shelter and in the film can be seen armed with her megaphone, making an emotional appeal to the community: “If you can contribute anything with the little you have it will help … even a piece of coal.”
Police colleagues take round plastic bags asking for “some money, soap or a banana”.
But the response is unsympathetic. One man says: “You ask locals for money to help rape victims, but what is the government doing?”
Munyole says the hardest thing about her job is the lack of funding. “In our line of work there is no money,” she says. “It is really hard when you come across orphans and there is no means to help them. When I can’t fulfil my duty it hurts me and even I am subject to psychological trauma.”
Phil Clark, a political scientist who specialises in conflict in Africa, says it is not unusual to see police officers going cap-in-hand to locals.
He says: “It is very common especially if you are working on crimes that are not considered a priority. The justice system in Congo has really ignored sexual and gender-based violence until very recently.”
But Munyole remains hopeful that things will change: “There are new laws being passed to protect women and children and I hope one day we will see an end to the abuse they face.”
In Kisangani at least, Munyole’s message is starting to get through. In the film she is visited by three women who work at the market selling dried fish. They present her with a pile of notes. “We’ve learned what you are doing and we are deeply touched. That’s why we’ve gathered our little funds to support your work with these widows and orphans,” they tell her.
Munyole replies: “I’m truly moved to learn there is still love. I thought I was alone.”
