Grace Essen

Grace Essen

The prompt response of neighbours was what averted the possible death of a 14 year old girl recently, when she collapsed due to weakness and dizziness after she was raped. Among those who came to her aid was the landlord, who pretended as if nothing happened between them.

Her ordeal started sometime late last year, when the landlord asked her to buy him N10 sachet water which she bought and took to his room. He locked the door and pushed her to the bed. When she shouted for help he said he would kill her with a knife he had kept on the table. That was the first of three rape incidents, according to her.

The landlord told her to not let her parents know that he had deflowered her. He said if they noticed, she should lie that it was her classmate. Subsequently he demanded for her pants which he took away and returned the following day and said she should make sure she wore it. And from that time, according to her, her private parts started itching and she found it difficult to urinate.

To keep it all a secret, the landlord threatened to kill her if she mentioned his name to her parents as being responsible and also promised to buy her a mobile phone if she kept the secret. And she did.

It was her complaints about itching and difficulty in urinating that got her mother’s attention. However, she kept the truth from her. The role the landlord played in helping find a solution for the girl made him the last person the family ever suspected. Getting to know he was indeed the cause of their woe must have been devastating.

Motherly instinct would always prevail. At about 2am one morning, a few weeks after the girl fainted; her mother woke her up and insisted she opened up on who actually raped her. It was then she confessed it was the landlord.

“A father who has no job or whose job is more flexible should be able to stand in for the mother when she is unavoidably absent, and not feel ‘less than a man’. A mother’s place cannot be substituted, true, but a father can become a ‘make-shift mother’ at least until mother gets back. All a child really needs is parental care, it doesn’t matter which of them is available at that given time.”

Imagine the pain of a mom who, as the sole bread winner, left home for work at a factory, 3am every morning to return at about 11pm in the night, so she could put food on the table for her children and for her husband who lost his job 12 years ago. That comes to about 20 hours away from home! When she left for work, the girl and her younger ones would be fast asleep, and when she returned, they would have gone to bed. How could she have seen her daughter to know what horrible things were happening to her? And to find out that her daughter was gang-raped by three men who took her away when she went out to dispose of waste and returned her the following day. So much for one poor family on the struggle to survive.

The experience, horrible as it is, can easily be the case in many households, maybe not to this extent, just maybe. The past two editions, I looked at horrible things that happen to children when mothers walk away, girl children are often the most vulnerable. The story revolved around two girls (5 and 3) who were raped repeatedly by their father’s friends and colleagues while he was on duty, and left them in their care since their mother was not there.

The need to meet up with the ever rising cost of living has made more women to leave the home to earn extra income to support the family. The children are often left all alone or in the care of total strangers, the outcomes in some cases have been abduction, abuse and even death.

Any woman who finds herself in a situation where by she is the only or major source of income, and has to be away from home most of the day so her family can feed, is in no doubt under a lot of pressure. If anything goes wrong in the home, she is the first to be blamed. But can one individual bear the responsibility of overseeing the household and still perform optimally at work? It would be in the interest of the family, particularly the children, if we begin to look at overseeing the household as a task requiring both parents to work as a team. A father who has no job or whose job is more flexible should be able to stand in for the mother when she is unavoidably absent, and not feel ‘less than a man’. A mother’s place cannot be substituted, true, but a father can become a ‘make-shift mother’ at least until mother gets back. All a child really needs is parental care, it doesn’t matter which of them is available at that given time.

Some women tend to hate their lives when they have to stay home to look after children and their spouses go to work. Maybe we should look at it a little differently–it’s just a phase of life requiring that we slow down a bit to look after our young children, while we still find creative ways to pursue our dreams. For many women, it is a luxury.

What’s your thought?