Quantico actress Priyanka Chopra has expressed shock at the level of sexual violence against children in Zimbabwe after her recent visit to the country.
Speaking to The Associated Press in South Africa after visiting the southern African country as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador Chopra said government officials there told her many young girls are “asking for it.”
She says girls are told it’s their fault.
“I heard a lot of this when I asked these government officials who said girls are asking for it,” she said. Some girls were as young as 3 when they were raped by their fathers, uncles or other relatives, she said.
Chopra told the news agency that said she couldn’t get one Zimbabwe girl’s story out of her mind.
The girl told Chopra how she was raped by her uncle when she was 7.
“The pastor of their church told her family that she was possessed and she should come and live with him … but the pastor raped her for two years,” Chopra said.
She said it was “an eye-opening experience” meeting girls who had been shunned by society and thrown out of their homes after being raped.
“I am from India and I have seen wealth and poverty live together all my life,” she said. “That is the state of the world. That is our reality. It takes people like us who are privileged, who have everything that we may need in abundance, to be able to share it in parts of the world where they may not have that.”
“She was taken away from there and sent to another uncle and aunty of hers. The aunty then forced her to have sex with her husband, who was HIV positive. That was how she contracted HIV at age 17.” The girl tried to kill herself three times before she was rescued by a group that offered her psychological support, Chopra said.
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