Sorie's* last day of freedom was a few weeks before his 14th birthday, when the well-to-do father of a girl he liked got word that his daughter had been hanging around with a street boy. The girl's father had him arrested for "conspiracy to commit sexual penetration", and after a brief stay in the local jailhouse, Sorie was transferred to Freetown's Remand Home, the pretrial destination for most of Sierra Leone's juvenile detainees. That was more than three years ago and Sorie has spent every day since living in a cell with 13 other boys, despite having never been formally charged with a crime. "Her family never came to court and the magistrate never called for me again," he says, sitting on...
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