Today in History: LRA Abducts 139 Girls from Aboke School

What the report says

On October 10, 1996, Lord’s Resistance Army rebels abducted 139 schoolgirls from St. Mary’s College Aboke, a Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda, according to Nile Post’s historical account. The article says the girls were mostly between 13 and 16 years old and were taken into the bush under the leadership of Joseph Kony. It describes the raid as one of the most notorious episodes of Uganda’s long insurgency.

Nile Post reports that the LRA used abducted children as fighters, porters and forced wives for commanders. The abductions at Aboke became a stark example of the group’s wider pattern of child exploitation and violence across northern Uganda, where communities were displaced and subjected to human rights abuses for years.

The report also highlights the immediate response by Sister Rachele Fassera, the school’s deputy headmistress, who followed the rebels in an effort to recover the girls. Her intervention reportedly helped secure the release of 109 captives, while 30 were taken deeper into rebel-held territory. The remaining girls were gradually freed or escaped over time, with the last survivor from that second group returning in 2004.

The Aboke case later became a rallying point for families and activists, including Angelina Atyam and the Concerned Parents Association, which pressed the issue before international bodies. More broadly, the incident helped bring global attention to LRA atrocities and to the risks faced by children in armed conflict.