Uganda Jailed Two Women for Five Months After They Were Accused of Kissing
Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise said Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ law led to five months in prison, reported abuse, and continuing threats after the case ended.
Ugandan police arrested Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise after reports that the two young women had kissed in public. Prosecutors accused them of engaging in same-sex activity, placing them under the threat of life imprisonment. They spent five months in custody before an Arua chief magistrate discontinued the proceedings and discharged them. Uganda never secured a conviction, but the state had already taken five months of their freedom.
Faith, a 22-year-old musician who performs as Torrero Bae, and Denise, 21, were living together in a rented room in Arua City in northwestern Uganda when police raided their home in February. The accusation against them moved from public surveillance to police action because Uganda has made same-sex intimacy a criminal matter and given neighbors, police officers, and prosecutors the power to turn suspicion into punishment.
The arrest did not begin with evidence of violence, coercion, or harm. It began with reports that two women had shown affection toward one another. Prosecutors alleged that Faith and Denise had engaged in homosexual acts, and the Anti-Homosexuality Act made that accusation sufficient to place both women in danger of spending the rest of their lives in prison.
Inside custody, Faith and Denise said the punishment became physical and degrading. Denise described an overcrowded cell, unbearable food, mockery from people who treated their case as different, and police officers beating Faith even though she had not threatened them. Those accounts remain their testimony, but they show what criminalization permits once LGBTQIA+ people are placed under the control of police and prison authorities.
President Yoweri Museveni signed Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023. The law prohibits same-sex sexual relations, authorizes life imprisonment for the offense defined as homosexuality, and permits the death penalty for specified acts classified as “aggravated homosexuality.” It also criminalizes conduct described as promoting homosexuality. Uganda’s Parliament did not merely express hostility toward LGBTQIA+ people; it constructed a legal weapon that police and prosecutors could use to arrest, expose, imprison, and intimidate them.
Faith and Denise’s case shows that the government does not need a conviction for that weapon to cause permanent damage. Police removed them from their home. Prosecutors pursued the case while the threat of life imprisonment remained over them. They spent five months in custody. The arrest and prosecution exposed them to a community that Denise said had been willing to attack them when they were arrested. By the time the magistrate discontinued the proceedings, the state had already marked them publicly as targets.
Release did not return the lives they had before the raid. Denise said prison had damaged their ability to walk through the streets together without being followed or threatened. She said callers continued to warn them about the case and that people threatened to send them back to prison if they were seen together again. Faith described her arrest as punishment for expressing her feelings as a human being.
Both women also faced material punishment outside the prison walls. They reported losing work and family support after their arrest and public exposure. The magistrate discontinued the proceedings, but ending the prosecution did not restore the income, privacy, relationships, security, and freedom of movement destroyed while the case remained active. It also did not remove the danger created by the arrest, detention, and public exposure.
That continuing harm is part of how Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act operates. The law allows public accusations to become the starting point for police raids, arrests, and prosecution. Arrest exposes the accused. Exposure invites harassment, family rejection, unemployment, and threats. Prison becomes only one part of the punishment; fear follows people home after the cell door opens.
Ugandan police arrested Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise. Prosecutors pursued charges carrying the threat of life imprisonment. Faith and Denise spent five months in custody while they said they endured abuse and humiliation. Museveni and Uganda’s Parliament created and preserved the law that made the prosecution possible. The prosecution ended, but Faith and Denise said they remained without work, family protection, privacy, safety, and the ordinary freedom they had before police entered their home.
The government did not need to convict them to punish them. Uganda took five months of their freedom, exposed them publicly, and left them facing danger for appearing together after the prosecution stopped.
Uganda’s prosecution of Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise shows how anti-LGBTQIA+ laws punish people before any conviction and continue endangering them after a case ends.
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