The adult slavery of her father, who fathered her four children, is still fresh in the memory of Priscilla Musonda Schaufelberger, age 50.
When she was six years old, her father began abusing her with her mother’s knowledge.
Uncovering the truth about her parents’ defilement, she revealed in an exclusive interview that they forced her to witness it.
Her father joined her later. That was not all. But her mother and other family members knew about his secret marriage. At age 23, she married her father as his fourth wife.
“I was very young and innocent,” she recalls the adult abuse beginning in 1965. But I recall being made to watch them. That everyone in my life allowed it, including my mother, is the worst.
My mother’s family knew I was being abused when I was 11 years old. I was accompanied by my mother’s older brother who is a policeman.
He saved her for a short time, she recalls.
“Dad flew mum to pick me up. A flight for me and one for her, she said.
The abuse continued when she returned home. Priscilla’s father forbade her from making friends hide his filthy path.
My father later took me to a remote location in Kafue, where I was imprisoned. “I was my father’s slave.”
Then came the worst. She had a child for her father at the age of 19. At 23, she had a second child for him. Priscilla’s father decided to marry her after her second child was born, despite having three other wives.
She had her third child a year after her second, and her fourth at the age of 27. Her children included two girls and two boys.
“I had two more children after my father declared our marriage. No family members objected. Dad started renting me a house where I lived with my kids and other relatives. He’d come to see the kids, but he’d come for me in reality. That was because he used to beat me,” she recalls.
Priscilla completed her education by correspondence despite her circumstances.
Her situation made her envious of her children.
“I used to hate and beat my kids. Only this way could I express my rage. A relative defiled my eight-month-old daughter, so I only felt emotionally attached to one.”
A respected photojournalist, her father was working for a public media house, despite his callous behavior.
Priscilla finally snapped in 1990. She left home to live on the streets of Lusaka. After eight years with her father.
To flee her heavily guarded home after eight years of marriage, she failed.
“My father knew everything. But I was always caught trying to flee. In fact, she became suicidal.
Priscilla sought death in the streets, but God saved her.
Over the course of a year, she lived on the streets of Lusaka, either under the bridge in Kamwala or at the Intercity Bus Terminal. Indifferent to her fate, she abused alcohol with reckless abandon.
Nobody looked for her while she was homeless.
When she finally reported her father to the cops in 1991, she was a teenager.
“I had had it. Living on the street made me strong and stopped feeling victimized. In order to make her life worthwhile, Priscilla resolved to fight.
Her story was initially denied by police officers.
In the police station, officers chased me for my appearance. Their assumption was that I was mentally ill because I was filthy,” she says.
Unexpectedly, a police officer who was just arriving for work stopped to listen.
Her father was charged with incest later that day.
The arrest of her father went global. On the next day’s Zambia Daily Mail, she recalls.
“I felt so powerful when I saw him handcuffed,” she said.
Sadly, her father had no remorse for what he’d done. He would look Priscilla in the eyes at court and threaten her with death.
Priscilla claims her family was enraged when she sued him. They thought she had betrayed her father and no one would stand by her side in court.
It was Priscilla who lost the court case.
“My own mother lied in court. The court dismissed the incest charge because she said I wasn’t my father’s biological daughter. My mother lied to protect my father, I know that. The other wives of my father probably forced her to lie,” she said.
Priscilla was forced back onto the street. The two magistrates who had presided over her court case were now helping her financially.
The named magistrates began to provide food and shelter to her.
They took Priscilla out to lunch one day and introduced her to a man who would help her with rehabilitative counseling and financial assistance.
Then she started doing business internationally. The couple married in 1999 after meeting in Zimbabwe on a business trip.
When he met his wife, Reto says he didn’t care about her past. The life they were going to start together was important to him.
“I met her in Zimbabwe where I used to run a restaurant.” We married and moved to Zambia from there.
When we first met, she wanted to tell me about her past, but I refused to listen. To his wife of 21 years, Reto says, “I just wanted a new beginning.”
After their wedding, the Schaufelbergers spent 13 years in Switzerland.
As for Priscilla’s children, they are still shunned.
For this reason, Priscilla founded the PSHAF in Lusaka in 2006. She was in Switzerland at the time.
After President Michael Sata persuaded her and her husband, Reto, to return to Zambia in 2013, she and Reto returned in 2014.
Priscilla describes her life as an adult slave to her late father in her book, Stolen Childhood.
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