27 June 2009
analysis
Lagos — She called me on the phone and asked if I was Jerome, and I said yes. She then proceeded to say "My husband has been abusing our three year old daughter sexually." Apparently if you had known me before now, you would have realized that I am used to that terrain in the sense that due to the nature of my Job as a counselor, I know some fathers are sexually abusing their daughters in Nigeria, and most of their wives know about it. So why don't they talk you may ask, well I think for fear of not being believed by anyone around, even members of her father's family. And so a lot of women have decided to just stay silent and bear the consequences, and believe me these are some grave consequences. Consequences that can make the woman go insane or develop a terminal disease as a result of having internalized so much. But why can't she just talk? You may ask again despite the fact that you may have asked the first time, but not satisfied with the answer "She may fear that no one will believe her." But come to think of it, would you believe her? If a woman walks up to you now and says "hey, mu husband is having sex with my three year old daughter", what will be your first reaction? That she has lost it, maybe?
Well that was exactly what happened to my caller. After she told me that her husband was having sex with her three year old daughter, I told her she needed to take the girl for a checkup in case we may be confronted with a case of venereal disease or other medical conditions like the girl having a tear etc. Though this three year old girl had been reacting by not eating her food at school and coming back with her lunch box untouched. The teachers have also noticed that she was beginning to withdraw from other children and was just staying by herself, and then she was beginning to feel some itch around her vagina. Her mother apparently had noticed that too at home, but was not sure if she should react to it.
Reacting to it will mean she will have to face the fact that what she sees happening in the night on the same bed where she sleeps with her husband and her 3 year old daughter with an eighteen months old son was true. She will have to first, painfully accept that her husband usually removes her three year old daughter from her side when he assumes that she the mother had slept and then starts to finger her before penetrating her with his penis while she freezes n the same bed.
Accepting that it was true will also mean that she will have to go crazy enough to confront him, and give him no chance to deny it in any way, because that could spell trouble for her big time. Trouble because then it will be her word against his, since this three year old might not be able to say" Daddy has been having sex with me". She will also need to know that she was ready for the consequences, because then she will have to take away her daughter with her son and run away from a man like that who definitely must be a sick man deserving to be taken in as an inmate in the psychiatric hospital, and not allowed to come out until he is certified well by the professionals, after careful examination and thorough assessments.
Thorough assessments, because allowing this man to go out from his ward/mental home without thorough assessment will mean he will go back and do worse than he has done before, and mind you, while he was abusing his daughter sexually, you can be sure he was not only abusing her alone, but other once innocent children in the neighborhood as well, because the sexual abuser never abuses just one child, but many. There have been cases where a girl was been abused in the family and never said a word to anyone, and then grows up to a full grown woman who feels she is healed now and can talk about her child hood experience with her sisters only for her to have her sisters tell her that the same criminal abused them too.
But we can only talk about getting a thorough check up only if we get these men who perpetrate such criminal act to admit it at first. How many men admit that "yes I have been sexually abusing my child, and I am sorry for doing so? And that was exactly what this man in question did, he denied everything, and made everyone around him believe that the wife was not well and was the one that needed to be checked mentally. It was so bad that even the ladies who got involved with the case couldn't believe that this lady was completely well. But that is women for you. While you find men defend other men, hardly will you find women defending themselves, but would rather side a man against their fellow women. Very pathetic I must say.
So what happened in this case? Well, she took off with her children, back to her parent's home. Her parents didn't give her enough support, so after so much convincing by her husband to come back home, and that everything will be alright, she went back home to her sick husband who has continued from where he stopped I'm told. So what will likely be the consequences to that? I guess we are already facing it. Do you know how many young ladies today think they are sex objects and pleasure units? Don't you see them all over the musical videos, on our streets at night, and even in work places believing that through seduction and sex, they can move higher in their career? You can even identify some of them by their explicit sexual insinuating comments on their Profile status on facebook.
One day as she jams luck, she just might find a man that will take her to the altar and will come face to face with her father who will give her away with his blessings, and then maybe then she may have nothing else to say to her father other than "Bless me father, for you have sinned".
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