EXCITING NEWS: TNG WhatsApp Channel is LIVE…
Subscribe for FREE to get LIVE NEWS UPDATE. Click here to subscribe!
Ozioma Onyenweaku
When it comes to child sexual abuse we have always maintained that it is those whom the child isclose to and conversant with that turn around to invade the child’s privacy and violate her. While pointing the searchlight at those close to the children as being the child molesters, the searchlight was never expected to spot parents in the picture.
Even when the searchlight spotted some fathers as violating their children, we never expected grandparents to be part of it. We know we have had cases where fathers raped and impregnated their own daughters; and some even procured abortions for the daughters. Some mothers have also played active role in concealing and covering up such sexual abuses in their homes; all in a bid to ‘protect’ their marriages, and not bring the family to disrepute. I always have issues with women who embark on such a child destruction mission in the name of saving face and marriage.
The closest I have come to the role of grandmothers in this wicked act of child sexual molestation was the story of the man who was arrested by the police in Delta State who impregnated his 15 year old daughter. We still remember that case, right? The man did not just rape the girl, but impregnated her and procured abortion for her in connivance of his wife, the girl victim’s mother, and grandparents.
The foul point for me in that event is that the girl victim’s grandparents were aware of the abuse. The girl told her mother, the mother did nothing but only told the girl to keep shut and not say it out to anyone. The girl told her grandmother. Her grandmother also warned her never to say it out to anyone. When pregnancy resulted from the continuous abuse , both parents and grandparents procured abortion for the girl who almost lost her life in the process.
I have always seen grandparents as the upgraded and lovelier version of parents; having tons of love for their grandchildren. Grandparents are known to be over protective of their grandchildren; they would rather offend their children than offend their grandchildren.
That was why it was with great pain that I received the news of the 7 year-old girl whose grandmother was using as sex slave. The news actually drew a sharp pain in my heart.
Members of a vigilante group in a community in Imo State of Nigeria were the ones that arrested one of the molesters of the girl. The accursed grandmother had been collecting money from young men and giving the 7 year old girl to them to have sex with. She has been collecting between one thousand (1000) and one thousand five hundred (1500) Naira from each person she allowed to sleep with the little girl. A 7 year old girl! A grandmother! Who then is a child safe with?
On which time of the day was this devil of a grandmother created! Why on earth was this devil given the blessing of being a grandmother!
I have always said it that many children are actually going through a lot in their homes the pains of which only them know and would ever know. How did we get here?
Quite unknown to many, many girls you see on the streets at night, and hanging out in hotels are victims of several years of sexual abuse from relatives, from a place they called ‘home’. What children encounter at home, in the family, and in the environment shapes and moulds them into who they turn out to be. Deviant parents raise deviant children. Deviant society breeds deviant citizens. It is only the grace of God that is saving so many children in our society.
I have read about drunkard and gambler fathers who use their minor girls to service their debts. I have also read about a grandmother who indirectly led her granddaughter into prostitution by not being involved in the child’s life as the only parent the child had. She was having a hard time herself and trying to make ends meet. The girl was always alone at home as the grandmother would be at work even at times till late night. So the grandmother was never there herself when the visitors to their home kept taking advantage of the girl being alone at home to sexually abuse the girl. The girl later got wild.
But this direct involvement, this direct pimping of a 7-year old girl by her own grandmother really got me badly. Some parents really don’t deserve to be called parents. May this grandmother from the pit of hell rot in jail! She simply does not deserve to live.