10-year-old girl’s futile efforts to resist prostitution

Charity was just 10-year-old when she was brought to Lagos State and forced into prostitution.

She had tried to dodge the terrible job, but her Madam repeatedly starved her, just to compel her to give in to prostitution.

When the Madam realized that Charity was still a virgin, she said it would be bad for business. She needed to make Charity to lose her virginity. She locked the young girl in a room and unleashed four men on her. Charity was brutally raped. After Charity started prostitution, all the money she made, was taken by her Madam.

Charity, who is now in her early twenties, recollected how horrified she felt when her Madam gave her skimpy skirt and blouse to wear.

Charity said: “After giving me the mini skirt, she said she had paid for a hotel room that somebody was waiting for me there. That was when I knew what was happening. I begged her to please take me back to my place that my uncle would pay her whatever she had spent on bringing me down to Lagos.”

But as the young girl pleaded with her Madam, the woman became further infuriated. The woman yelled: “Do you think I’m a fool? Who is going to send you back before you pay me back? If you know you want to pay me back, it has to be here in Lagos!”

 Charity recounted:  “I told her my mum was not a prostitute and none of my family members had ever been a prostitute. I told her that I wouldn’t want to be one. She said I should do it, that I will be able to help my family. I said NO. For like a week I was there, but I didn’t do it. She was feeding me all these while.”

Her journey into prostitution started at Cross Rivers, when a lady, Esther, played on the girl’s naivety. Charity explained that she was ready to leave her sister’s home even at that tender age because of the hell her sister was going through in the hands of her husband. Esther came into her life at that period.

“The person is a woman. She is called Esther. She stays around my area in Cross River. I was at home when she came one day and said that I should hurry up, that she had paid for my bus ticket. I was staying with my sister back then. I didn’t take anything.  I just went with her and boarded the bus.

“But before that day, she had asked me not to tell anybody that she would be taking me to Lagos. We left very early in the morning. When we got to Lagos, a man who was already waiting for us at a park in Ajegunle picked us. When I got to the place, I sat down and within five minutes, ladies started coming out and talking in a way that I could not really explain.

“I became puzzled. I asked what the girls were doing around; nobody could give me an answer. A particular woman greeted me in a way I didn’t like. She brought out a mini skirt for me to wear. Esther who brought me had left. She just handed me over to this particular woman and left. I later discovered that the woman who brought me from Cross River, Esther, is a daughter to this particular woman she handed me over to.

“After that week, she now said she couldn’t continue to be feeding me. She asked me if I was not aware that she was using another person’s prostitution money to feed me.  She threatened to stop giving me food.”

And true to her threat, the woman started starving Charity. When Charity could not bear the hunger pangs anymore, she gave way to tears.

“I begged and cried for her to let me go. I was just around 9/10 years old then. I begged her to let me go, but she refused. She said I was not the first person who had been brought to her as a virgin.  That there had been 1000 of girls who had been brought there as a virgin, who were no more virgins.

“I ran away from there, but I was caught and taken back to the brothel. When I was taken back, she locked me in a room for a month. On the day the door was opened, four men came in and raped me.

“I started bleeding badly. A nurse was called to try and stem the flow. The nurse treated me.”

One of the poignant memories  that Charity remembered was the suddenly  fact that law enforcement officers, especially the police used to patronize such brothels and sleep with under aged girls, instead of arresting the Madams who  were involved in the crime.

Another thing was that some police who attempted to raid such places, usually embarked on such raids because of what they hoped to collect from the brothel owners.

But eventually, it was policemen who rescued her and others like her.

She said: “Policemen used to come there to make arrest but the Madams used to bribe them. The last policemen who came there one day were from Alagbon. They arrested everybody and took us to the police station. Our Madams asked us to lie that we came to the brothel ourselves and that we were the ones who wanted the job.

 But I told the policeman the whole truth. Our Madams tried to bail the younger ones among us, but the policemen refused. The policemen allowed them to bail only the grown up girls.

“It was the policemen who took us to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP). I spent a month and two weeks in that brothel. It was a terrible experience! Meanwhile my elder brother and sister had been searching for me in Cross River. When my brother saw me, he cried. He thought I had died because he was the only one taking care of me. My parents were late. I am the last child.”

Today, Charity is a matured and stronger lady, who had chosen herself as a voice for the voiceless. 

She told Daily Newswatch, that one of her goals in life is to speak against human trafficking and prostitution of under aged girls.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to report any suspicious move to NAPTIP. It’s not as if the young people in states like Cross Rivers are jobless, but everybody is just looking for a way to survive. It’s just that we were looking for a way of making ends meet. And when these human traffickers get you, they wouldn’t tell you the details of what you’re expected to do over there in Lagos.

“I decided to run away from home because my elder sister, whom I was staying with, got married to a man, who was, maltreating her. I couldn’t stand what she was going through. My brother was hardly ever around. So when I saw that opportunity to come to Lagos and sell food, I felt it was okay. I didn’t know it was to sell something else.

“I later got to know that even my madam’s husband and children knew about her dealings in Lagos. When NAPTIP arrested her, they got to know she had trafficked over 50 girls. So because I didn’t want to work with her, she sold me to someone else.

“When I fought with the other woman, they called a guy to come and beat me. While the guy was beating me, he fell down and started foam forming at the mouth. They called me names, that I was a witch.  At the police station, every other young girl said they went to my madam voluntarily. It was all lies!

“There was a girl they brought the same day I came; she started working the following day.  It all bores down to what one wants for one’s self.”

After Charity was rescued, she was counseled and rehabilitated by staff of NAPTIP. Real Woman Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation and NAPTIP, teamed up to send her to one of the best fashion designing schools in Lagos State. It was incidentally on her celebration day, when NAPTIP provided her with materials to start off her own fashion designing business that Daily Newswatch spoke with her.

She said:  “I am happy that today, I can do something for myself. When someone had assisted in empowering you, just use that empowerment well because you don’t know how tomorrow will be. I spent nine months at NAPTIP shelter but later left for ‘Real Woman Foundation.’ I spent six years at Real Woman Foundation.”