When her daughter and more than 100 other school girls were abducted by Ugandan rebels, Angelina Atyam extended forgiveness even to those who had sinned against her.

March 2, 2010 | Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Divinity magazine.

Seven years: the biblical time of restoration, freedom, and jubilee. Seven times 70: the number of times Jesus told Peter to forgive his brother. Seven years, seven months: the time that Angelina Atyam’s daughter Charlotte was held captive after the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted her and 138 other girls from a Catholic boarding school in 1996.

Sevens surface as a motif throughout the transformation of “Mama Angelina” from a soft-spoken nurse-midwife and mother of six to an international activist seeking the release of all Uganda’s abducted children.

Atyam’s daughter was among an estimated 35,000 youth, some as young as 6, that the Ugandan government believes were abducted by the LRA during nearly 20 years of fighting. From 1987 until a ceasefire was signed in 2006, the LRA used children as human shields in battles with government troops. Boys were forced to become soldiers; girls were enslaved as “wives” to rebel leaders.

The path Atyam pursued to negotiate the children’s release -- and to further peace and reconciliation within her country -- was inconceivable for many other parents, but she was resolute. Guided by the Lord’s prayer, she and other parents of abducted children began to pray for forgiveness of the rebel soldiers.

“The lives and work of Angelina Atyam and [Sudanese] Bishop Taban are examples of what oases of hope look like in a broken world,” says Emmanuel Katongole, co-director of the Center for Reconciliation and associate research professor of theology and world Christianity at Duke Divinity School.

“In listening to the stories they have come to share, the question for us is: ‘How do you create and sustain lifegiving possibility in the midst of war, violence, poverty, and hatred?’”

The abduction

In October of 1996, Mama Angelina, as she was affectionately known, was working as a private nurse-midwife helping usher new life into the world. Her husband had a good job, and the couple’s six children were all in school. The family home in Lira hummed with daily routines.

But the family was awakened at 6 a.m. by a neighbor pounding on their door. During the night, LRA rebels had stormed St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school, where their 14-year-old daughter Charlotte was a student, and abducted the girls.

“I screamed and fell down,” recalls Atyam, bringing a slender hand to her chest and apologizing for momentarily being at a loss for words. “I saw the fear in my husband’s eyes. He was talking, but I couldn’t hear a word he said. Our other children were afraid for their sister and their own lives.”

When a friend arrived and began to pray with the family, Atyam remembers that a sense of strength and calm came over her. The feeling continued to sustain her as she and her husband rode with other parents to St. Mary’s, 10 miles away in Aboke parish. They found the children’s books, shoes and clothing scattered on the ground, Atyam said.

“Parents were wailing, ‘The children are all gone.’” The dormitory windows were broken, smashed by the rebels to reach the girls huddled inside.

The parents learned that Sister Rachel, the petite but formidable nun who was the school’s deputy headmistress, and a male teacher had followed the rebels into the jungle. When the pair caught up with them and pleaded for the girls’ release, the rebel commander wrote “109” with the tip of his rifle’s bayonet in the dust. That was the number of girls he would release.

When the headmistress continued to argue for the release of the entire group, he threatened to kill them all. She left with 109 girls, the words of those left behind echoing in her ears:

“Sister, please, I’m sick” … “Sister, I’m the only child of my parents”… “Sister, I have asthma” … “Sister, they will rape us,” followed by the girls’ screams as the rebels kicked and beat them.

The next day, the headmistress arrived at the Atyams’ home. With tears running down her cheeks, she told them that Charlotte had not been among the girls released.

“I think that Sister died inside that day,” Atyam said. “Only half her soul was left, and she never recovered. Every time we later met, the tears would start to flow. I would try to get her to eat with me because I knew she couldn’t eat and cry at the same time.”

News later came that the rebels had marched most of the remaining school girls into neighboring southern Sudan, where Charlotte would be held captive and brutalized for the next seven years.

The Lord’s prayer

Atyam and the parents of the other 29 girls started meeting weekly at a local church to fast and pray for their children’s release. No amount of praying seemed to lift the parents’ burdens. They had agreed not to conduct their own searches at the urging of the boarding school’s deputy headmistress, who feared that might upset negotiations she had begun after getting little assistance from either the local police or the Ugandan government.

“I was confused, bitter, and very deep in my heart I was thinking, ‘How do I avenge this?’” says Atyam. “Yet we continued to pray and call upon the LRA to release our children, protect them,

bring them home, and make peace again.” That is, until a priest was leading the parents one day in the Lord’s prayer. When they got to “Forgive us our sins,” the parents suddenly stopped.

They could not say “as we forgive those who sin against us.” Realizing that they were asking for forgiveness of their sins, yet could not forgive the rebels for stealing their children, they filed silently out of the church.