There are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers today worldwide, and Grace used to be one of them. When she was 15 years old, she was kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group fighting the Ugandan government. Forced to walk barefoot from Uganda to Sudan, she was then given a gun and trained to be a soldier. "I was forced to kill 12-year-old boys, two of them who tried to escape from the army," she remembers sadly. In addition, Grace was made to have sex with different men.
After enduring constant abuse, Grace's body finally gave out. After she fainted from lack of water, her commanders took her for dead and buried her alive. Barely living, she woke at night, but had no choice to rejoin her captors. "I was no longer myself," she recalls. "I was just a walking skeleton with rotting feet, because of the suffering I passed through."
Months later, after a vicious battle, Grace was able to escape. "It's hard to forget and relax because I am often reminded, and my friends are still there," she says. "Every day is like a struggle in my life. I feel like I was cheated because I lost part of myself and my innocence."
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