9 months ago (in August 2021), 13-year-old “Macy”* found herself pregnant after being brutally attacked by a gang. Despite pressure from her family to abort, she decided to keep her baby.

10 years ago (in Oct. 2011), if you’d asked Vanessa about her dreams for her future, she would have told you she didn’t have any.

On Saturday, I received a text from Cissy. “Uncle, there’s a girl in my village that needs help,” she said. She went on to tell me about “Macy,” a 13-year-old who was raped by several men in her village. She’s now five months pregnant.

Ten years ago [Oct. 2011], Scott and I walked into a government office in Kampala, Uganda, and saw a little girl sitting quietly in the corner. The little girl, the child protection officer explained, had run away from home after years of sexual abuse. He didn’t know what to do with her because there were no systems in place to help children experiencing abuse.