Dirty stale air filled their lungs as soon as they entered the facility. Through the darkness they could make out the forms of 18 African teenaged boys who were perplexed by the sudden presence of a half-dozen white men wearing suits and holding cameras.
This was an unusual sight at this remand home a detention center for Ugandan minors who had been accused of crimes and were waiting for their cases to be heard in court.
Nearby three teenaged girls were locked in a smaller concrete building. These 21 children had lived there some for up to two years sleeping on mats made of reeds and trying to survive with limited food and water.
“I remember walking in and it was a dark awful dirty place said Jay Milbrandt, director of the Pepperdine Law School’s Global Justice Program. My first impression was this is just a breeding ground for disease. … I can’t imagine living in this facility all day.”
Most of the kids were at least 40 miles from their homes. Some of them had been arrested and brought there without being able to notify their families of their whereabouts. Many of them were innocent. But without shoes money or supplies they had no means of escape. They had no choice but to sit and wait for a trial date that didn’t seem to ever be coming. It was prison.
“When we got to the remand home … the first thing that came to mind was sorrow and pain said Ray Boucher, Pepperdine law alumnus and member of the Board of Visitors. I just wanted to take my arms and wrap them around the 21 children and tell them it’s going to be OK. [It was] dark cold hard inhumane.”
A magistrate judge explained to the boys why these Mzungus— which means “white men” in Swahili— were visiting Masindi Uganda. These are lawyers they said and you must answer any questions they ask you.
From Jan. 10 through 13 Milbrandt and Boucher along with Associate Dean Jim Gash and law alumnus David Barrett spent time with the children at the remand home as part of an operation they called Project Masindi. For four days they interviewed the prisoners reviewed police reports and spoke with witnesses of the alleged crimes. On January 14 they submitted their findings to the High Court of Uganda.
Their mission was to gather the details surrounding the kids’ cases and summarize them in a series of reports hoping to facilitate the scheduling of trial dates for the children.
Because of their work many of the children have already had their hearings and been released from the remand home and the rest of the cases will be heard in court by Monday.
The children were charged with a number of different crimes ranging from petty theft to statutory rape to murder. When Milbrandt Gash Boucher and Barrett began to evaluate the evidence against the prisoners however it was clear that many of them were innocent.
In Uganda one accusation is enough to warrant an arrest. Because the country’s criminal justice system doesn’t have the court staff or resources to keep up with its number of cases prisoners will often wait for years before they get a hearing.
“All you have to do is be accused of something and you rot for a long time Gash said. In the U.S. you’re out [of jail] that night. You get a lawyer and you get probation. There you just sit.”
On the first day the magistrate judge asked the boys if any of them spoke English. Only two a pair of 16-year-old brothers named Henry and Joseph raised their hands. They were assigned to be interpreters. “My assumption was that everybody [at the remand home] spoke English said Jim Gash, associate dean for student life at the School of Law. So the initial reaction was ‘We have a bigger job ahead of us than we thought.'” Henry and Joseph had been at the remand home for 20 months when Gash and Barrett interviewed them. They were accused of beating a man to death although the police report revealed they had been in school at the time of the murder. It was also clear from the interviews that these boys were extraordinarily gifted Gash said. Prior to their arrest they had attended an advanced school with scholarships from the Ugandan government. In December the female police officer who monitored the remand home was arrested which left the children without any adult supervision. The local government put Henry in charge giving him a cell phone a set of keys and instructions to lock himself and the other kids in each day. He became the leader of the remand home dutifully carrying out his responsibilities while making sure the other children were safe. “It was otherworldly Gash said.
If the kids tried to flee, Milbrandt explained, they would likely be killed by nearby villagers, who would see them as escaped prisoners first and children second. That’s the mob justice mentality out in the bush— criminals don’t last very long Milbrandt said.
The group also interviewed a 17-year-old girl named Scovia who had been at the remand home for five months because she was charged with murdering her two-week-old baby. With Henry interpreting Scovia claimed her baby girl had died of natural causes.
During the interview Scovia spoke in quiet tones and would often have to be asked to repeat herself Gash said. She appeared to be sad hopeless and still in mourning. She kept saying “I didn’t kill my baby. I love my baby.”
The court file confirmed she was telling the truth Gash said.
Shortly after she became pregnant Scovia moved in with her grandmother who was an alcoholic. On the night she gave birth Scovia was alone at the house. She sat on the ground cradling her newborn baby for several hours before her grandmother returned home and cut the umbilical cord. Scovia named the baby Kirabo which means “gift.” Kirabo began to vomit soon after she was born so Scovia asked her grandmother for money to take her baby to the hospital. Her grandmother refused saying the vomiting was normal and that Kirabo would be fine. Two weeks later while the grandmother was out drinking Kirabo died. The grandmother told the police that Scovia murdered her baby. “She didn’t kill her baby Gash said. That was clear from our conversation and even clearer from the court file. There wasn’t any reason to believe this baby died from anything other than being a sick two-week-old that wasn’t getting medical attention.”
Not all the children were innocent however and some confessed they had committed the crimes they were charged with. But many of them had been at the remand home for longer than the sentences of their alleged crimes. One boy for example had served six months for stealing $40 and a tin of bubblegum.
Boucher said the prisoners were initially distrustful but “by the end they were smiling and you knew that they were beginning to trust somebody for the first time in months if not years Boucher said.
On Jan. 15, they submitted their work to Ralph Ochan, the High Court Judge who would be hearing the children’s cases. He was satisfied with the thoroughness of the reports and said he’d try to schedule all the hearings by February.
Most of the children, including Henry and Joseph, have already been released. If all goes according to plan, Scovia and the rest of the children will have their hearings by Monday.
Gash said the Ugandan government realizes its criminal justice system is in dire need of personnel and resources. Ochan was not surprised to learn that there had been children living at the remand home for two years. He knows [the system] is broken. The problem is he’s one judge and he’s responsible for the whole area Gash said. They don’t have enough judges they don’t have enough lawyers they don’t have enough court staff. They don’t have a system that’s accountable to anyone.”
John Napier who graduated from Pepperdine Law School in 2009 and works for the High Court played an integral role in securing the men access to the remand home. Napier worked clo
sely with John Niemeyer who is Country Director for Restore International an organization dedicated to bringing justice to impoverished children around the world. Restore International was “the impetus for the project Napier said.
Both Napier and Niemeyer were present at the remand home on the first day of the project, and throughout the week they gathered police reports and other documents to aid the efforts of Milbrandt, Gash, Boucher and Barrett.
Milbrandt said Restore International has knowledge of five other remand homes in Uganda. They plan to continue the legacy of Project Masindi by sending attorneys from the Pepperdine community to another remand home in the next six to nine months.
Their ultimate goal, however, is to train the Ugandan government to do this kind of work itself.
Hopefully if this turns into a full-blown program we can see children have regular and consistent hearings before Ugandan courts rather than languishing in a remand home Napier wrote in an e-mail. If that can be counteracted then there will be a great impact on Ugandan youth and the ripple effects could be quite substantial.”