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‘PASTOR’ DEFILES 2 YEAR OLD GIRL IN BENIN CITY
Dear Networkers
As
I write this I am sick to the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what is
going on in our society. On Wednesday the 7th of June 2006
our local news broadcast the story of a two year old girl who was
defiled by a so called pastor. The child was reported to be receiving
treatment in the Central Hospital and his father narrated his ordeal
to viewers. WRW Legal Aid Clinic immediately, through our hardworking
lawyer Andrew Egbule, went to the hospital to locate the victim. He
found her parents by her hospital bed and offered our services and
full support to them free of charge.
Narrating her ordeal the victim’s mother said that she left her
daughter in their room to cook in the kitchen(in Nigeria we have these
one room accommodation called ‘face me I face you’ favoured by the low
income group. The tenants share kitchen and bathroom facilities and
the security in such houses is minimal. Once you enter the house you
have access to all the rooms.) She said when she went back to the room
she could not find her daughter and she started looking for her. She
found the child screaming and bleeding at the back of the pastor’s
church. The little girl told her mother who did that to her. The child
is presently on admission in the hospital and they say that she will
have to undergo a surgical operation.
Right now the case has been transferred to the Director of Public
Prosecutions (DPP) Ministry of Justice. Can you believe that the
police released the suspect on bail, despite our protests, instead of
charging him to court. The Criminal Code make a statutory provision of
two months within which to prosecute the case, so we are making
advocacy visits to the DPP’s office to ensure that the suspect does
not escape the law through technicalities .We will make sure that the
case is prosecuted in the courts and as usual we will keep you
informed about the outcome.
Please we as NGOs should always make it a point of duty to advice the
public on personal security measures they should take for their
children, especially the girl child. There is now a high incidence of
rape and defilement in the cities. Our society is fast changing and
the communal life we once knew, when everyone was their brother’s
keeper is coming to an end with increasing urbanisation where
strangers from far places whose backgrounds are unknown now live
together as neighbours in the cities.
Nogi Imoukhuede,
Project Coordinator,
Women's Rights Watch Nigeria-www.rufarm.kabissa.org |