THE society may, for obvious reasons, not always be able to prevent a rape, but it should always punish it heavily. In all cases, rapists are opportunists who prey on the weak and defenseless, intent on slaking their depraved lust. They approach and violate their victims in the most brutal fashion, subjecting them to agony that may take a very long time to heal, or even consume the victim if appropriate help is not rendered to them by critical organs of the state. While rape under any guise is abhorrent and utterly unacceptable, the recent case in the Egbo community in Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State where a 37-year-old married man and father of four was arrested for defiling an eight-year-old girl, presents a sordid example. According to an activist, Kelvin Ejumudo, who drew attention to the incident on Sunday, November 3, the suspect, a friend and neighbour of the victim’s parents, confessed to the police that he had defiled the minor more than once.
Ejemudo said the little girl’s parent had taken her to the suspect’s house and embarked on a day’s trip, but he had defiled her and threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone about it. He was also said to have offered the victim N500, which she rejected. The suspect was reportedly detained at the Ughelli area command of the Nigeria Police Force preparatory to his arraignment in court. Medical examination of the victim reportedly revealed warts infection, while her hymen was broken and her vulva ruptured, and she is currently undergoing medical treatment at an undisclosed hospital. According to reports, the suspect had defiled a little girl in the Egbo community sometime in 2023 and was flogged by community youths who allegedly took money from him and “settled the matter” without informing the relevant authorities.
This story is heartbreaking, but it sadly falls into a pattern of similar stories of assaults on little children by depraved adults in Delta State and elsewhere. For instance, in June this year, a 50-year-old father of seven and an active member of the vigilante group in the locality, reportedly defiled an eight-year-old girl on Oghene Road in the Amukpe area of Sapele, Delta State. The victim was reportedly staying with her guardian in the area. Said a resident of the area: “Initially, the girl did not disclose the incident to her uncle. It was only when she started experiencing pain in her private parts that her uncle sensed that something was amiss. Upon being confronted, the suspect, who denied the allegation, later confessed to the crime.”
In April 2023, an eight -year-old girl and her mother tested positive for HIV after the mother’s boyfriend allegedly violated the child at their residence in Alegbor community in Delta State. In October of the same year, the Delta State Police command arrested the proprietor of a school in the Agbor-Obi area of the state for allegedly raping a four-year-old girl. The suspect had reportedly torn the girl up with scissors in order to penetrate her! Said a source: “She came back from school complaining to her mom that she was feeling pains, the mum checked her and saw blood clots coming from the child’s vagina. The man’s lawyer is currently telling the mom that they should just settle her and her daughter.” Such cases, are, of course not peculiar to Delta State. For instance, in April 2009, the Abia State command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) arrested a 29-year-old man for allegedly raping and infecting an eight-year-old girl with HIV.
As we have noted time and again on this page, Nigerian children are gradually becoming an endangered specie. Depraved adults without the slightest prick of conscience are robbing innocent and defenseless children of their childhood and setting them up for a life of agony. Sadly, as we noted in previous editorials, the majority of defilement/rape cases are not even reported because of the Nigerian society’s deeply entrenched structures of injustice. In many cases, the suspects get away with their vicious crime using the power of money and connections, and how sad that lawyers who ought to exercise some sense of moral outrage even while defending their clients are sometimes caught in the web of bribery offers to the parents/guardians of the victims in order to get their clients off the hook!
Almost in all cases, child defilement cases have an undercurrent of parental neglect. For instance, the parents of the victim in the present story reportedly left their eight-year-child in the care of a known pedophile in order to be unfettered by her presence during their one-day trip to an undisclosed destination. This is beyond distressing. What trip is more important than the safety of an innocent child? Now that the child has been violated, have the parents found what they sought on their trip? Could the parents not have exercised better judgment in this case? Of course, this incident highlights the increasingly lax attitude to parenthood by many young people in the country. It seems that people enjoy bringing children into this world, but cannot just be bothered about taking care of them. In many cases, these so-called parents treat their own children like a burden that must be cast off at the slightest opportunity, then burst into crocodile tears when the children get hurt by the criminals in the neighbourhood. These parents are, in our view, guilty of criminal neglect of their children, and it is high time the law took care of them.
It is clear that by the level of insanity they exhibit, these abusers deserve multiple life sentences, while anyone found collaborating with them, including the deranged youths who reportedly buried a case of defilement by flogging and collecting a bribe from the suspect in this case, thus enabling him to violate yet another innocent child, should be given long jail terms to serve as a deterrent to other criminally minded youths who appoint themselves as judges in defilement cases.
We are extremely saddened by these cases and urge the Delta State government, and indeed all state governments in this country, to treat these perverts and destroyers of children as enemies of state and ensure that they are prosecuted without fail. We trust that on their parts, the courts will confine them permanently behind bars.
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