A 17-year-old Form Four pupil from Sakubva in Mutare is sitting her ZIMSEC Ordinary Level examinations with both hands heavily bandaged after suffering severe knife wounds while fighting off an intruder who sexually assaulted her elder sister and then attempted to rape her.
The teenager, whose identity is being withheld because of the nature of the case, has stitches across her palms and fingers after grabbing the blade of a knife during the attack at their home in the OTS section of Sakubva in the early hours of last Saturday. The attack happened just two days before her final O-Level examinations began.
Despite the pain and trauma, she has refused to miss her examinations. She has been granted an additional 15 minutes to complete each paper.
“It is painful to write with sliced fingers and hands. I have stitches all over my hands and experience excruciating pain when writing, but there is no other option but to write,” she said on Tuesday after finishing a paper.
The two sisters and their young brother, who lost both parents, have been raising themselves. The elder sister, 24, supports the family and her siblings’ education through vegetable vending.
The teenager said she had fallen asleep on a sofa while studying and was woken at around 2 am to find a naked man wearing a black mask standing beside her sister.
“My sister, who was under duress, said: ‘Please do not scream.’ At first I thought they were lovers, but the man ordered me to sit down and not go back to sleep,” she said.
She then realised something was terribly wrong when she saw a large knife in his hand. He threatened to kill them if they screamed and forced the teenager to watch as he sexually assaulted her elder sister.
“I covered my face with a cloth and continued praying,” she said. The man told her to stop, saying her prayers were noise.
After assaulting the elder sister, he turned to the teenager and ordered her to remove her clothes. Her sister pleaded with him to spare her because she was due to start her O-Level examinations on Monday, but he responded angrily, saying no one would tell him what to do.
As he moved closer, the teenager grabbed the blade of the knife with her bare hands.
“I believe it was the Holy Spirit that took control of my hands because I had been praying. We struggled for the knife, and I pushed him until he hit the stove. He stormed out naked,” she said.
The sisters quickly locked the door. The man tried to force his way back in, and they screamed for help. Neighbours responded, and police arrived at around 4 am.
The teenager described the suspect as tall and light in complexion. She said he repeatedly demanded US$6,000, claiming he had been told the family was in the second-hand clothing business and kept large sums of money at home.
“He said he had been told that we were in the second-hand clothes business,” she said.
The elder sister said she woke to find the intruder already inside her room.
“He whispered that I should not shout because he had already searched the house and discovered that only children were inside and could not overpower him,” she said.
She said she had only US$30 from her vending business, which the man took before abandoning it during the struggle. The family’s Samsung and Huawei mobile phones were also taken.
She said the man gained entry by breaking a wooden window and unlocking it from inside.
“There was no padlock inside, which made me wonder whether he already knew us or had been watching us for some time,” she said.
The sisters suspect the attacker had been monitoring the family.
The elder sister said watching her younger sister write her examinations in agony has been unbearable.
“She is in so much pain, and I wish that pain had been inflicted on me instead, especially at a time when she is writing such important examinations,” she said.
More: The Manica Post
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