Former teen soldier asks U.S. to help work for peace in Uganda

Published: 2006-10-12

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Grace Akallo's voice was barely audible above the soft outdoor breeze as she described being forced to kill after being kidnapped as a teenager into a Ugandan guerrilla army. "I was used and abused" for seven months by the Lord's Resistance Army, she said at an outdoor news conference Oct. 10 in Washington's Russell Park on Capitol Hill. In a calm, steady voice belying the gruesomeness of the events she described, Akallo told how she was given weapons training and used for sex by the guerrilla group based in northern Uganda. "Ten years ago last night, I was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army," she said. Akallo was one of 139 girls kidnapped Oct. 9, 1996, from her dormitory at St. Mary's boarding school in Aboke, Uganda, by the LRA, as the guerrilla group is known. She was 15 years old then and was given as a concubine to a senior guerrilla commander.

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