Each of these three centres is affiliated with the US religious right group Heartbeat International. This month, openDemocracy revealed numerous examples of “disinformation, emotional manipulation and outright deceit” in its global network.

At the Ugandan Ministry of Health, Sabiiti said the government supervises many faith-based health facilities across the country but that these centres are not among them. She said she was surprised to learn that they existed. She was also alarmed.

“If the girls are already expecting and are being counselled against contraception, that is wrong”, said Sabiiti, who explained that the ministry has a specific policy to teach mothers and pregnant women and girls about modern contraception.

Survivors of abuse meanwhile need “holistic” support and “cross-referral to other sectors like justice, education and gender”, she added. While she hadn’t known about these centres before, Sabiita said: “We need a mechanism to apprehend them.”

Sympathy and blame

In the US, there are thousands of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’, run by religious groups, that seek to stop women from having abortions. In Uganda, abortion is illegal even in cases of rape and incest, unless doctors deem the woman’s life is at risk.

But there are still at least sixteen of these centres in the country, according to openDemocracy research. Nine are affiliates of the US group Heartbeat.

One of these, Wakisa Ministries, has been celebrated for sheltering pregnant teens. Though its own website casts doubt on the difference it makes; it says that only 137 of the 1,720 girls sheltered since 2005 returned to school after giving birth.

In an interview with openDemocracy, Vivian Kityo, Wakisa’s director, said it has also sheltered at least twenty pregnant pre-teens, about 40% of whom had survived incestuous rape. She opposes abortion even in these cases, she confirmed.

Kityo was one of the people that spoke to a teenager who accompanied our undercover reporter to Wakisa and said she was pregnant after having sex with her uncle because she was scared he would stop paying her school fees.

The age of consent in Uganda is eighteen, and the teenager said she was fifteen years old. This would be classified as statutory rape under the law, as well as incest.

Kityo expressed empathy, telling the girl, for example: “The incest is not your fault”. But she also said: “You consented, in a way.” Another counsellor asked: “Did he force you to have sex with him?” and: “How does your auntie feel about you now?”

Their visit to Wakisa was secretly recorded. Afterwards, Elizabeth Kibuka-Musoke, a Ugandan clinical psychologist, read the transcript and was taken aback. At some points, she said, “the counsellor seemed to be blaming the victim”.

Overall, she described the session as flipping between emphases of “God loves you”, and “You’ve been a bad girl and you need to be punished”.