Mary Andrew endured constant beatings from her husband. Every time Mary Andrew's husband drank, she got a hiding. A policeman, he used his work boots to kick her in the face. I was a punching bag. I was his slave. Mary, a mother of two, drops her gaze as she recalls, with embarrassment, how he forced her into a threesome with another woman. When Mary's husband announced he wanted a second wife, she objected, telling him that while polygamy might be acceptable in many parts of PNG, it was against her Catholic beliefs.
After delivering another fierce beating, he threw her out of their Port Moresby home. Some sex workers will accept bags of rice. When her husband heard, he ensured Mary was ostracised from her children. Mary weeps as she tells her story at Poro Sapot "peer support" , a Save the Children project that gives sex workers a place to wash, cook and rest during the day.
Her oldest child, now 17, is "still supportive", she says. But Mary's former husband has kept her youngest son from her since he was 20 months old; he is now 9. Physical and sexual violence against women - at all social levels - is the second epidemic, feeding the first. Marital rape, incest and child prostitution are illegal but are distressingly common. Gang-rape by packs of "raskols", or even police, is a daily fear for women, especially in urban areas, says Dame Carol Kidu, PNG's sole female parliamentarian.
However, most violence against women goes unreported, with police often indifferent. Statistics are patchy but it is estimated that as many as 70 per cent of women are beaten by their spouses, with men condoning violence and women accepting it. In one Law Reform Commission report, 67 per cent of rural men and 57 per cent of their partners answered "yes" to the question "Is it all right for husbands to hit wives?
Fewer agreed that it was acceptable for wives to hit husbands. Dame Carol, whose Moresby South electorate takes in some of the country's poorest settlements, or shanty towns, feels that violence has increased as respect has waned for the custom of bride-price. Traditionally an exchange of wealth between clans that also provided protection for women, it has become, she says, a "commercialised transaction that can turn them into mere chattels".
