‘I went in the middle of the night. My abuser never spent a day in a cell.’

She had spent the entire night at Isange One Stop Centre in Kacyiru, doing everything she was told. The medical examination. The psychological assessment. The questions from a male officer whose tone, at first, made her want to walk out the door. She stayed because a friend beside her said: You’re traumatised, give him a chance. She gave him the chance. She gave all of them a chance. Then she watched, over eight agonising months, as every single one of them squandered it.

Now Glory Iribagiza — Gender and Innovation Editor at The New Times Rwanda, two-time winner of Female Journalist of the Year, a woman who has spent years writing about the violence that stalks other women’s lives — has broken her silence. In a raw, meticulous open letter published on X (formerly Twitter) and addressed directly to President Paul Kagame, she has accused Rwanda’s justice system of failing her at every turn, protecting her perpetrator through inaction, and patronising her when she dared complain.

The post went viral. And the Rwanda Investigation Bureau was forced to respond.

THE NIGHT SHE REPORTED

The assault happened at the end of September 2025. In the early hours of the morning that followed, Iribagiza made her way to Isange — the one-stop centre designed specifically to receive survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. She did not hesitate. She did not weigh the risks of speaking. She walked in.

“I remember seeing the sun rise as I arrived home the morning after. I had spent the whole night in Isange, doing everything I was told. But even though I was exhausted, I couldn’t sleep. I feared that I would die of a heart attack because my heart never settled.”

She had been assured, before she left, that the suspect would be arrested the following day. He had fled nowhere. He had family in a neighbouring country, and she had told the officer exactly that, expressing fear he would escape. Do not worry, she was told. It will happen tomorrow.

It did not happen the next morning. It did not happen that week.

THE STING OPERATION THAT WASN’T

That same morning, her friend received a text from the suspect. He wanted to meet, to “make amends” before the case escalated. Iribagiza, drawing on her professional contacts — she had previously interviewed Shafiga Murebwayire, the Coordinator of Isange — called the official directly and reported the contact.

Murebwayire’s instruction was precise: let him come, have your friend engage him, and officers will be on standby to arrest him. Iribagiza did exactly that. She sat, hidden, while her friend spoke to the suspect as though she were not there.

“A team of men arrived minutes late. One of them called me on the phone and told me to get out of the house for a chat. I entered their tinted car and sat in the back seat. I immediately noticed a pistol next to one of the men… All I wanted to hear was that they were going to follow his car. Instead, they asked me where he worked and where he lived.”

They complained about the traffic. They said they would wait for him at his workplace the next day. She texted and called repeatedly in the days that followed. She never heard from those men again — until, by chance, she opened the wrong door at Isange and found one of them seated at a desk. He did not mention the missed calls. He did not update her. He said nothing.

EIGHT MONTHS OF BROKEN PROMISES

What followed was a masterclass in bureaucratic abandonment. Iribagiza texted Murebwayire almost every day. Polite responses came — when she initiated them. She was eventually told her case had been assigned to a female prosecutor, Mireile Nibishaka, in Nyarugenge. A female prosecutor, Iribagiza thought: she would finally feel safe sharing her evidence, narrating the details, without flinching.

She called. No answer. She sent a message introducing herself and asking for an update. The prosecutor replied: “Mwaramutse, case iracyarimo ikorerwa iperereza” — roughly, “Good morning, the case is still under investigation.” No questions. No engagement. When Iribagiza proactively listed the evidence she held, the response was a single word: “bizasuzumwa” — it will be examined.

“That was early November 2025. I never heard from her again, even after sending multiple texts.”

Then came the news that destroyed what remained of Iribagiza’s faith in the process: the suspect had been released. She tried following up with Isange. No response. The case, as far as she could determine, had evaporated.

THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE’S RESPONSE — AND ITS STING

Before she went public, Iribagiza had tried the formal channels of last resort. She wrote to the Office of the President, copying the Imbuto Foundation. She described her case. She asked what made this suspect different from those who were prosecuted.

The response she received back from the presidential office stunned her. Officials said they had called Murebwayire, who denied that anything had been mishandled. The message concluded with a Kinyarwanda phrase — “Ibhi byiza n’aamasomo meza” — and an instruction to trust the process.

“I found this patronising because if I hadn’t had any trust in them, I wouldn’t have gone in the middle of the night to report the case. I wouldn’t have chased them for weeks, gone to Isange multiple times, repeating traumatising events over and over. I felt that a call to ask if what I claimed was true was simply not enough.”

She replied to the presidential office’s email, stating she was not satisfied and hoping that verification would go beyond a phone call to the very people she was accusing of inaction. Then, as she describes it, she was simply too traumatised to push further. She was studying abroad. She told herself she had done everything she could — and tried, like millions of women the world over, to find a way to move forward.

THE OPEN LETTER — AND THE WORDS THAT CUT DEEPEST

Eight months after she first walked into Isange, Glory Iribagiza sat down and wrote the letter she should never have needed to write. She addressed it to His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda. She signed her name. She published it for the world to read.

The letter is forensic in its detail and devastating in its honesty. But its most powerful passages are not the recitations of institutional failure. They are the moments when Iribagiza speaks as a survivor, not a journalist.

“I think about the crime committed every day of my life, and I will never forget it. My life will never be the same again. I have to learn how to live with the memory every day. However, my perpetrator is rewarded by a system that was supposed to protect me.”

She names the mechanism of that reward with surgical clarity:

“Sexual abusers in our midst thrive because they are rewarded. They are rewarded because of our silence, by those in power to do something but decide not to do it. Is there any better reward to an abuser than protecting them to the point that they never face justice?”

And then, in a passage that should trouble every policymaker, every police commissioner, every prosecutor who has ever cited low reporting rates as an obstacle to justice, Iribagiza delivers her sharpest indictment:

“On the news, RIB will say that justice is never served because women don’t report — even when women like me reported, followed up, and escalated their cases, but in vain.”

RIB RESPONDS — AND RAISES MORE QUESTIONS

The letter triggered swift institutional reaction. The Rwanda Investigation Bureau broke its silence with a statement on X, outlining what it said had transpired:

“After receiving the complaint from Glory Iribagiza, the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) conducted investigations, the suspect was arrested and detained. The case file was prepared and submitted to the Prosecution while the accused remained in detention. The Prosecution then forwarded the case to the court and later the suspect was released based on the conclusion of the medical legal report.”

It is a statement that raises as many questions as it answers. RIB says investigations were conducted and an arrest was made — yet Iribagiza says she was never notified that her perpetrator had been detained, precisely the kind of update she was explicitly promised when she first reported the case. The bureau says the suspect was eventually released on the basis of a medical-legal report — but offers no explanation of what that report found, nor why Iribagiza, the complainant, was not informed of this outcome.

Most critically: the statement does not address the eight months of silence. It does not explain why a survivor who texted almost daily received nothing but terse, reactive replies. It does not account for the officers who arrived late, the prosecutor who went quiet, or the presidential office that told a traumatised woman to simply trust the system.

The statement confirms the machinery moved. What it cannot explain is why the woman at the centre of it had to take to social media and address her Head of State directly before anyone felt compelled to speak.

WHY THIS MATTERS BEYOND RWANDA

Rwanda is, by many measures, a continental leader on gender policy. Women hold a majority of parliamentary seats. The law criminalising gender-based violence is among the most progressive on the continent. President Kagame has spoken repeatedly about the centrality of women’s rights to Rwanda’s development.

That is precisely what makes Iribagiza’s account so significant — and so urgent. If a woman of her profile, her professional connections, her media literacy, and her institutional knowledge can spend eight months chasing justice and find none, the question is not what happened to Glory Iribagiza. The question is: what is happening to the women who do not have her platform?

She asks it herself, at the close of her letter, with the clarity of someone who has spent a career translating complexity into human truth:

“Your Excellency, my fear now — should have been from the beginning — is that justice will never be received. From the look of things, without your intervention, I will never see my abuser stand trial and get the sentence he deserves.”

It is a fear shared by millions of women across Africa who report, who follow up, who escalate, and who are told — explicitly or through silence — that the system was not built for them.