Clerics, parents, police boost rape, child abuse -Advocate

Mr. Ebenezer Omejalile is the secretary and operations manager Advocates for Children and Vulnerable Persons Network (ACVPN). In this interview with JULIANA FRANCIS, Omejalile reveals the challenges in combating rapists in Nigeria.

 

Omejalile

What does your job entail?

I’m a social worker and master trainer in child protection and youth development. I’m a consultant to both local and international partners. In the area of consultancy, we talk about Data Tools Development, Reporting Tools and also monitor cases in Nigeria. I’m part of the technical working group set up by UNICEF in Lagos and Abuja.

During COVID1-19 lockdown in Nigeria, was there a spike in domestic and sexual violence?

Yes, there was a spike, but I’ve always told people rape in Nigeria was cancerous. People didn’t believe me then. There were so many hidden issues which we had not seen, but the COVID-19 pandemic exposed what we had been saying for ages. We’re talking about sexual abuses. We’re now seeing people being killed after being raped. It’s like rapists are coming out with a kind of vengeance. Children are being abused at home. Some of them have become mentally unstable. The COVID-19 brought out animalistic behaviour in some individuals. In fact, it affected the entire system in Nigeria. We witnessed increases in police killings and domestic violence; children being physically abused and raped. The spike was inevitable, but these cases had always been there.

What do you mean by rape is cancerous?

When cancer finds its way into a person, it damages the person completely. It’s now showing physically and people are beginning to see it. Do you know that up to this moment, many people didn’t believe there is rape or defilement? They didn’t believe fathers are sleeping with their daughters and mothers are abusing their daughters. They didn’t believe uncles are sexually abusing their nieces, not until now. It is now confronting many of them in their homes. People are now seeing and hearing it. They are now expressing shock and asking questions.

How did COVID-19 expose rape?

We’ve been living with it for long. We saw the signs, but we overlooked them because we were busy, looking for our daily bread. People sold their sanities to their neighbours, teachers, pastors and relatives. They trusted these people and failed to be extra observant. They didn’t know they were living and making friends with monsters. These hidden and faceless monsters are now showing their true faces and colours. I don't know if you heard about the 80 years old blind man, who has a history of abusing children. Everyone, especially his tenants, feared him. They said he was diabolical. He abused children in his compound. It was his daughter who reported him to us.

Was he also violating his daughter?

He wasn't violating his daughter. She got angry with what he was doing to children in the compound. One of his sons is a pastor. This old man is polygamous. He infected his second wife in 2012 with HIV. He was arrested by Agege Police Station and transferred to the Gender Unit of the Lagos State Police Command.

Didn’t the old man deny it?

He could not deny it. The defenceless children had spoken. When children see an enabling environment, you’ll be shocked at what they would say.

So the lockdown brought out the animals in some people?

People were not used to seeing the rate of rape cases they saw and heard during the lockdown. Also, people were not used to being locked down or kept in a particular place for long. The police will tell you that the rape and violence were expected and that the spike was also expected. People were angry with DISCO for not always making power available so that children would be occupied with television. Even with the online classes, these children faced a lot of challenges. Sometimes, they need to cool their brains. They need to watch cartoons to calm their nerves. There are chain reactions because people were not used to being on lockdown for long. We have to say thank you to COVID-19 for exposing these issues. What we’re trying to do now is damage control. It’s now clear that you can’t entrust anyone with your child. People are holding onto their children and everyone is now a suspect.

Tell us two rape cases that shocked you.

All the cases were shocking because of the dynamics. Whenever I get home some days, I look at my daughter and wonder what could attract adults sexually to children, leading to them violating them. My wife complained that I was allowing my job to affect me. You know what? Most perpetrators were victims.

What do you mean sir?

They are survivors of the same crime and of the same situation. If an abuse survivor is not properly addressed in terms of rehabilitation, necessary psychotherapy and psychosocial support. They were also denied love, acceptance from family front and the system itself. The lack of all these can lead to major problems. If those items were not put in place for an abused child, that child could become an abuser. Some of them bow to peer pressure. They want to examine things, they want to experiment with things and that is when you see the issue of alcohol, drug addiction and pornography coming into play. These people, who are abusing victims, also need help. But with the rate of things right now, we’ve not done anything. We are just stitching a fraction. If we have done anything, we wouldn’t be seeing this spike. Those are the ones you know about, but I must tell you that sexual abuse cases are still underreported. 

You asked about cases that have shocked me. Last year, a particular man, an oil worker, who has two daughters, was discovered to have been violating his wife’s niece. The child used to go to their house for school vacations. We asked the girl to tell us how it happened. She’s 11-year-old. She told me that anytime she goes there for holiday, the man would come in the night to pick her up from the room. He would take her to the sitting room and start playing pornography on his phone. Once they finish watching, he would insert his fingers into her private parts. He would then begin to violate her. He has been doing that for long. The mother didn’t know what was going on. She just noticed that anytime she asked her daughter to go to her sister’s place for holiday, the child would refuse. The abused girl’s father is even a Sunday school teacher in a Catholic Church, but he didn’t know what was happening right under his nose. They found out when the child started showing signs of Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF).

You mean Vesicovaginal fistula?

Yes. In the school she attends in the East, she started bedwetting. The parents were invited and the child questioned. She opened up. We immediately put all apparatus in motion to arrest the idiot. There was a time they said he travelled to the United States. We waited for him to return, but something went wrong. The girl’s father called me the perpetrator had been sending people to him. The matter was supposed to be handled by Pedro Police Station. The Area Commander knew about the case. He had already given instructions, but the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) was transferred to Oyo State, to head the Special Anti-Robbery Unit. But since his transfer, nothing has been heard about the case. And most of his church members were coming to plead on behalf of the perpetrator, asking the girl's father to forgive. He told us that he had forgiven the perpetrator. I told him he had compromised the case. 

The truth, however, is that there is a law. It is not in his power to forgive. The problem here is that the police didn’t give attention to that case. The complainant, who is the girl’s father, has stopped picking our calls. I have narrated my dilemma to my colleagues. We are pursuing the case.

What’s the second case?

The second striking case for me had to do with a father of six children, living in Sango-Ota. It’s a case of a father and son violating five daughters/sisters. Someone alerted me to the case and linked me up to a pastor, who is the mandated reporter. In the course of speaking with him, he said he wanted to know about our operation, how we work. I told him that we’re a bunch of professionals. I told him that it was now his responsibility to help to liberate those girls from their father. He said that the girls had been subdued, and wouldn’t want to talk to the authorities. I asked him about the children’s mother, he said the woman’s condition was bad. He said that he had confronted the perpetrator on different occasions on why he was violating his children, but the man would kneel and start begging him. I told him that our colleagues in that axis would conduct social enquiry. They would go round to see the area, to see the house and how the couple and children were living. They would make enquiry about the man in an honest way, that people wouldn’t suspect anything. In this enquiry, they would be able to check out the wife, to know if she was having economical challenges, because those girls will need to undergo rehabilitation. They need to be separated from their parents. The boy in question needs to be disciplined, to know and understand that violating his sisters with his father was wrong. The boy is 22 years old. He is the oldest among the six children. He’s doing what his dad is doing. My colleagues called me and they couldn’t understand what the pastor was saying. He said one honourable Hakeem had taken over the matter. He said that he wanted us to hands off; I told him he didn’t have the power and authority. We have all the information and we are going to raid them and he would be charged as an accomplice because he was obstructing justice. He was trying to protect his Igbo brother, what about if it were his children that someone was destroying? I reminded him that the crime was against the State and nobody was above the law. The girls’ father'd modus operandi was to pick a knife, threatening to kill the girls if they didn’t allow him to have sex with them. Their mother is aware of the rape but keeps quiet. That’s the culture of silence.

There’s another trending case now. A pastor told a man that anyone who marries his daughter would become prosperous; he now decided to be sleeping with his daughter. He wants to be the first to violate the girl so he would become prosperous. The girl’s mother is late. The girl ran away from home, to somewhere at OPIC, where she is looking for job and started living among vulcanizers. The guy that called us was worried that the girl could be violated at the place she ran to for solace. I spoke with her on the phone and she said that she was fine. We just need to take her away from that environment. These are some of the issues we are talking about. It is a systemic issue. The gatekeeper, who is supposed to speak out, is also an accomplice. Law enforcement officials are also trying to make things difficult. Their job should be done and done professionally. There shouldn’t be sentiment. There's a need to understand what the survivor is going through.

What do you think is the solution to rape?

The solution is to make the system work! We have laws; we thank God that the President has instructed the Inspector-General of Police to look into these issues. The IG has come out to say that the scope of the Gender Units and the Juvenile Welfare Centre (JWC) across the country should be expanded. Detectives should be attached to Gender Units for proper investigations. They should visit scenes of crimes to ascertain the level of involvement. Policemen attached to these units should be trained because capacity building does not end. The world is revolving. Lagos State for example, has only 12 family support units in existence. So let's use Lagos as a yardstick. The Lagos State government, the governor and his wife can incorporate the Family Support Units into the Lagos State Trust Fund. We would need to mobilise the Gender Units, which do have operational vehicles. No money is made available for the policemen who work in these units for investigations. They end up using their hard earned resources. The major hindrance is that policemen need to be trained in investigation and how to handle survivors. I have a case where an uncle was recently remanded through the Gender Unit. The man has been violating the girl since 2018. He video-recorded her and whenever he wanted to have her, he would use the video as a blackmail tool. He would threaten to send the video to his friend if she didn’t allow him to have sex with her. One of the police stations we visited on the highland made a mess of the case. In cases that have to do with child abuse in all forms, a policeman should have the requisite training, to know how to handle things. But if you think all policemen can handle it, you’re doing injustice to so many hard working police officers. You need to see some of the policemen at the front desk when they ask questions. You’ll hear them barking, “Who fuck you?” and they would be asking this question unmindful of people around. I tried to whisper to him on what to do, but he kept going on, that was when I lost it. He was even asking the survivor if she enjoyed it. I asked him if he would do such a thing to his daughter. At that point, everyone at the station knew what had happened to the girl.

What are the systemic challenges?

Let's take them one after the other. Let’s start with the police. Imagine the child that was reported by a mandated reporter. There were signs someone was violating her. The DPO arrogantly came out and ordered that the girl should go for a psychiatric evaluation. He’s not supposed to do that. He has made himself the court, the prosecutor and the judge. I made them understand that they should know where to draw the line.

What should the police have done?

Police have JWC, where a survivor can be kept pending investigation. They should first remove the survivor from the hostile environment. Police need to be trained, that is why the Lagos State governor and his wife should incorporate the Gender Unit and JWC into the Lagos State Trust Fund. Lagos State is at the frontline. They conduct virtual training for prosecutors across Lagos State on these issues because there were a lot of substitutions of arrests. Police were changing names of suspects and charges to something else. We raised a flag. A policewoman did it at Area G because she was working under the Area Commander. See what she did; a father that was alleged to have violated his daughter was taken to Mirabel Centre. It had been confirmed that he had been molesting his daughter for long. When our colleagues got to the court, they checked the charge sheet and discovered that the policewoman had changed the charge to indecent assault. The man was granted bail in the sum of N250,000. But because we had drawn the attention of the magistrate, we made noise about it and he was re-arraigned last week. It is still happening in spite of the virtual training. We heard about a judge that struck out two cases. In the first case, the prosecutor admitted that it was a shoddy job by police that caused the case to be struck out. But in the second case, there was no reason. The doctor came to testify and four witnesses also came to testify. The survivor also came to the court. Judges should not have unnecessary grievances towards the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) prosecutors. It is not peculiar to a particular sector. We’re dissecting them one after the other. Do you know what it takes to convince a survivor to speak, believing she would get justice? Another major hindrance is the continuous adjournment of cases, which is discouraging for a survivor seeking justice.

We have to go out of our ways to get these survivors accommodations if they come from far places and also to avoid them being stigmatised. We have to look at their empowerment. I told you that we conduct social enquiries to see the strength and weakness of a survivor's parents, so we know areas to come in. We hand them over to some of our colleagues, who are into Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) programmes, to pay their school fees. The women are empowered under the OVC to keep them going. This will also help them to avoid gratifications from perpetrators.

Is the gratification for survivors to stop seeking justice?

Did you hear about Pastor Douglas in Osogbo? He had been violating his church member for four years. This member had been attending the church for 12 years. When he was arraigned in court, he had the effrontery to tell the magistrate that the victim wanted it. He worsened his case when he was asked his profession and he introduced himself as a pastor. The girl’s family trusted him. They gave him two Jeeps and even paid his children’s school fees. The girl’s father was overseas. Whenever her father sends stuff to Nigeria, the pastor would be allowed to first have a pick of whatever he likes. Some of the women that came to testify said that the kind of food they cooked for their pastor, they had never prepared for their husbands. They worshipped him. Whenever he is conducting services, he would ask to know those who were virgins in the church. Parents didn’t know that was the beginning of their daughters being violated. He targeted and violated virgins in his church. These special cases should be given accelerated hearings by the judiciary.

Are you saying that a lot depends on the judiciary in checking escalating case of rape?

Yes! The judiciary has to up their games. Now we are talking about the system itself; the government and welfare. Internationally, it has been stated that children should not be placed for a very long time in government confinement, because they do well while in family settings. But how many family settings are responsible? With COVID-19 now, who wants to accept another person’s child, to add more burdens to them? Most of them are unable to feed the ones they have. Government should fund the social welfare offices, so we can conduct more investigations. All hands must be on deck; the National Assembly should look into the issue of police budget and make serious allocations for investigations. 

We had a case of a child that was beaten to death in Bariga. We are not going to allow that case to die. Alimot Kadiri was her name. She was alleged to have stolen N2,000 and beaten by four men. They were arrested by policemen from Bariga Police Station. We are looking at the aspects of these special cases. We are also looking at cases of children with disabilities. Most of them are being violated, abused and abandoned. We’ve had cases of women with mental challenges, with children and we’ve been calling on welfare and rehabilitation centres to rescue these children from them. Someone asked me if I thought the current laws we have were effective enough to deter perpetrators, I said yes. Do you know what it means to stay in the cell or even being remanded for a maximum of one year? The perpetrator’s liberty had been taken away. Do you know the psychological effect he will go through? It is only when we let the laws work, that we will begin to erase abnormalities from all sectors.

Are you not worried about increasing cases of children's violation?

Yes, children between 0-five years are the worst targeted, but we’re also doing a lot of it. The prevalence of rape of children is very high. There’s a motive behind the target of these children. Schools also have a role to play in checking violations of children.

At a school in Okota, when a child was abused by an unidentified person, a teacher was sacked. You wouldn’t believe that as big as that school is, there was no single Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV). Schools should carry out background checks on prospective employees. Every one of them should sign the Lagos State Mandated Reporting Tool Document. There was the case of David Eyo, a head-teacher. He violated his 10-year-old pupil and infected her with a disease. He violated her several times on the premises of the school. He almost escaped us. He took almost a year to violate the girl. The police station that handled the investigation was Bode Thomas and they did well. But somehow, when it got to the arraignment, the officer from the Lagos State Police Command changed his charge to indecent assault. The father of the girl was very outspoken and he said that it was not indecent assault, that his daughter was sexually violated. He confirmed that the matter was transferred from the Bode Thomas Police Station. He stated this before the magistrate, who got angry and asked the policewoman, if she was not a mother. We found out that he was a serial sex offender. The first school he worked, dismissed him, but he went to another big school in Surulere, where he was made a principal and choir master. What I’m saying in essence is that before you dismiss a teacher, hand him over to the law enforcement officers. Make sure you report him. I have seen a school somewhere on Lagos Island, where a pupil was abused. The proprietor came to the command to make her statement. But others will rather hide the incident, to protect the image of the school. When a school makes such a report, it will be applauded and it will also boost the morale of parents. 

Last year at Makinde Police Station, a case was reported, whereby a teacher took a girl into the toilet while they were planning their end of the year party. The child was three years old. She never knew the child could tell her mother. She violated the child with her finger.

Does that mean the teacher was a lesbian?

Yes, the teacher was a lesbian. She was very unrepentant. The proprietor is UK trained. She had given all the school employees documents to sign before employment on issues of children protection and sexual violations. The proprietor came to the command and made a statement. The police wanted to compromise that case. There’s no way we will not look at our police brothers and sisters because of all these abnormalities. So, if the schools are in order, we would have a sound and safe environment for children. The schools should stop being afraid of losing pupils. Paedophiles go for special courses just to get into schools. Paedophile is not written on the faces of perpetrators. Children are mostly targeted because they have natural sensation. You see children playing with their private parts. Parents should check them and try to find out what is wrong. I have seen a three-year-old somewhere in Mushin, who a 60-year-old man was violating. Whenever the man wants to violate her, he would whistle, which was a signal. She would go to the toilet to meet him. After violating her, he gives her N1,000, which her grandmother usually collected. The grandmother was aware of what was going on. The Office of Public Defender (OPD) removed the girl from that environment and we prosecuted the woman.

How was the violation discovered?

While in school, the child told one of her classmates, Emeka, that they should go to toilet to ‘fuck.’ Emeka didn’t know what that meant and asked her. The teacher overheard them. She was questioned and she narrated that Uncle Rashidi used to take her to the toilet. The school got in touch with us. Before we could say Jack, the woman made sure that the man ran away. 

Boys are also violated. A woman violated a boy for two years, until she was caught. The boy was 14-year-old. She’s married and has children. I asked the family if they noticed anything strange about the boy, they said they noticed he was fond of locking himself up in his room. This is what we call withdrawal syndrome. The woman's name is Happiness.

What about the roles of parents in this war against rapists?

Parents need to be assertive where their children are concerned. Look at many pastors’ involvement in rape cases. These pastors are supposed to be change makers and parents lose their sanities because of them. Parents should learn to mentor their children themselves. You’re your child’s best mentor. If you don't know how to mentor, go and study how. There was a particular case in Ogun State, where a woman’s daughter was violated. The girl is living with disabilities. She did not know the perpetrator had been watching them. Whenever she leaves home, the perpetrator would scale the fence, go into the house and abuse the girl. He would use a handkerchief to wipe her private parts. Each time he goes there, the girl would make a marking on a calendar and that was how he was caught. When a child says, ‘mummy or daddy I want to tell you something’ please pay attention. When you return from work is the most crucial moment a child wants to talk to you. Parents should pay attention to their children. They should observe them and often check their phones. Children are now being violated and bullied on the internet. If your neighbour is showing interest and affection for your child, that’s an indicator. Be vigilant. Holiday or no holiday, don’t allow your children to leave home and go elsewhere. Sensor the kind of things your children watch on television. When they begin to have feelings for the opposite sex, that’s when the real work begins. Educate them. We would all be secured if we begin to pass positive vibes to them. You start mentorship from home. They say charity begins at home. The first primary contact for a child is the parents; anything done after the home is secondary. Look at the 80 years old man that had been violating a girl since she was three years old and she’s now nine years. 

Parents leaving their children in the care of others should stop. When you return, please ask your children questions about what happened at school and home. Parents should be cautious when they give phones to their children to play with, be careful so they don't practice whatever you have on your phone. Siblings, who sleep together, need to be separated.