Malawi’s HIV-positive man jailed for sleeping with 100 girls

AGENCIES

An HIV-positive Malawian man who said he had sex with at least 100 girls and women in traditional cleansing rituals was sentenced Tuesday to two years in jail for "harmful practices".

Eric Aniva, 45, was prosecuted on the orders of President Peter Mutharika after publicly speaking about his role as a "hyena" in a BBC radio documentary earlier this year. "I convict you to serve 24 months' imprisonment," judge Innocent Nebi told Aniva in a packed courtroom in the remote southern district of Nsanje.
In the first case of its kind, Aniva was found guilty on two charges on Friday after a one-day trial. Custom in some parts of southern Malawi demands that a man, known as a "hyena", is paid to have sex with bereaved widows to exorcise evil spirits and to prevent other deaths occurring. At the request of a girl's parents, the "hyena" is also paid to have sex with adolescent girls to mark their passage to womanhood after their first menstruation.
He said each family paid him a fee of between $4 and $7 The charges, brought under the gender equality act, involved sex with bereaved widows as none of the younger girls would testify.
Malawi is one of the worst HIV-affected countries in the world, with 27,000 deaths from AIDS-related illnesses and nine percent of the adult population infected with the virus.
Aniva faced a maximum five-year jail term, and his lawyers said they would launch an appeal. Aniva had told the BBC that he had slept with at least 104 women and girls, some as young as 12, in a ritual that lasts three days.
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