Raped!… T
From MOLLY KILETE, Abuja
Monday, May 28, 2007
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This little girl is just three years old. But even at that tender age, Blessing is experiencing first hand, the bitter aftertaste of the evil that a man can inflict on a fellow mortal. Blessing’s once happy life has now taken a sudden turn for the worse. Reason? A policeman from the pit of hell allegedly lured her into the bush and mercilessly raped the innocent girl. And her life has never remained the same.
"I am begging the good people of Nigeria to come and help me and God will help them," cries Blessing’s distraught mum, Mrs Florence (other name withheld), hot tears streaming down her face.
The innocent girl’s moving story commenced at about nine o’clock that fateful Sunday night when the crazy cop reportedly sent for her. Blessing was already enjoying her sleep inside her parent’s home in Bagusa, Gungwa when her brother ran in to deliver the cop’s message.
The boy had thought that the cop wanted to give his sister some cookies. Their mum, who was preparing dinner at the time, said she didn’t want the little girl out at that time of the night but later grudgingly gave her consent. She thought the caller was her husband’s brother who lived nearby.
But after some time, when the girl did not return, Florence naturally became worried. She rushed to her brother-in-law’s place to look for her daughter. Her confusion could only be imagined when the man told her he had not set his eyes on Blessing. Blessing’s brother was quickly sent for. The little boy then explained that the man that sent him to his sister was a certain ‘uncle MOPOL’ who had been drinking at a bar operated by Florence’s brother-in-law.
Admitting that he had seen the said cop early in the evening, the man rushed outside and discovered that the policeman’s motorbike was still packed outside the bar. He decided to keep a vigil by the bike and await the owner. Unable to continue an indefinite wait for her child, Florence started going from house to house, seeking her daughter. She went as far as the only river in the village, but was unable to cross to the other side. According to her, she then went inside an apartment by the river to find out if anyone there had seen her daughter. Someone allegedly told her that he had seen the cop walk past the house with Blessing.
"I nearly ran mad on hearing that," she confesses. "I then ran back to the village and screamed for help from residents to help me look for my daughter. People immediately came to my aid. We searched and searched but there was no trace of my daughter. I then went back to the river and started crying, begging the policeman to bring my daughter back, dead or alive. After that, I went back to the village."
Soon after, the suspected policeman suddenly appeared in the village with the missing girl, claiming that he had rescued her from the hands of kidnappers.
Apparently unaware that he was the prime suspect, the cop was said to have knocked on a family’s door with the little girl. Pretending to be excited, the family secretly sent one of their kids to raise the alarm in the village that both the girl and suspect were back. The villagers rushed to the scene, including Blessing’s mum, Florence. But their joy soon turned into sorrow when the little girl’s condition became more apparent.
"She was crying," narrates her mum amidst sobs. "She was saying, ‘mama, mama, my yansh, my back, my leg. He beat me, he beat me well, well. Mama carry me!’ I carried her. But when I tried to place her on the ground, her legs wobbled, and she was crying, complaining about her private part, her back and her legs. I saw that my daughter was soaked in water and mud from head to toe, with bruises all over her face, body and neck.
Not only that, I saw sperm around her legs and when I looked further, I saw that the man had penetrated her through the anus after he may have tried several times to penetrate her through the vagina. I could not believe what I saw and I started crying. God why? I cried because this is just a child. She is just three years old and the man knew that.
If I had known that it was not my husband’s brother that sent for the child, I would not have let her out that night. That was why he told my boy to say it was brother who was calling her. How can a man who has his own children do this to another person’s child?"
Boiling with rage over the cop’s alleged evil deed, the villagers pounced on him and beat him black and blue. But seeing that he might soon be beaten to death, Florence begged the angry mob to spare his life. Why didn’t she allow the crowd to finish off the alleged rapist; you ask.
"The man is a policeman," she notes. "Since he is a government worker, I wanted to report him to the government that employed him. I wanted to ask his employers if this child deserved what she got from this man, or whether I deserved the kind of trauma I got from the evil deeds of this man. I wanted them to tell me if what he did was good."
The crowd then marched the suspected rapist to the Gwagwa Police station and reported the incident.
Initially, the policemen reportedly queried the veracity of the story. But a senior police officer at the station wondered why the cop was unable to apprehend any of the kidnappers from whose hands he claimed to have rescued the girl. The officer then ordered that the girl be taken to a nearby clinic for proper medical check-up. And not surprisingly, the doctor confirmed what they had known all along; the girl had, indeed, been severally raped. She was immediately placed on admission.
According to Blessing’s mum, the little girl spent about one week at the hospital, where she had sleepless days and nights. "she was crying round the clock," she recalls, "She was always complaining of pains all over her body, especially on her private part. She could no longer stand on her own. Besides that, we are broke now, as we have spent all we have at the police station."
She is however, grateful to the hospital management for treating the little girl free of charge.
The medical practitioner who attended to Blessing, Dr Michael Ehimen told Daily Sun that there was massive evidence that the girl had been violated. "I found the girl had been sexually abused with bruises all over her face and at the anus with a lot of semen mixed with stool."
The girl’s mum told Daily Sun that while the police were dilly-dallying with the case, a concerned Nigerian, who learnt of Blessing’s ordeal during a visit to his relative on admission at the hospital, decided to take the incident to the media.
In the meantime, Florence is appealing to good spirited Nigerians to assist the family by helping her daughter get proper medical attention. She would want the girl examined for sexually transmitted diseases, notably HIV, and any other ailments that she might have contracted from the alleged rapist-cop. "I just hope my little angel has not been infected with any disease that could, in future, mar her reproductive system," she says, even as the mother of five recalls how she had prayed fervently before having the little girl after having given birth to three boys.
Blessing, she confesses, has never been the same since that ugly incident. "She hardly eats her food. Each time you want to feed her, she tells you that she is already full. Most times, she shivers like someone in shock. I believe that the incident is having a psychological effect on her. How would she grow up and live a normal life with this trauma already on her at such an early age? I am begging the good people of Nigeria, don’t let my daughter’s life be ruined, don’t allow this evil man to go scot-free."
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