Justice is too slow for rape victims – Bose Ironsi

Bose Ironsi is the Executive Director, Women’s Rights and Health Project (WRAHP), an innovative non-governmental organisation with Headquarters in Ejigbo, Lagos State, that works for the promotion of reproductive health, rights and general development for women, young girls and communities. She believes delay in justice for rape victims has given rise to the high incidence of child rape and other cases of violence against women and children.

The rate at which minors are being defiled these days is alarming. It has become an everyday occurrence. What do you think could be the cause of this unfortunate aberration?

I think there are several factors. One of them that is very obvious is the fact that people now speak out more. It is not as if those abuse or crimes were not taking place before, it’s just that people are more comfortable to speak about it now. The social media is also helping matters that when something is happening, people are no longer keeping quiet. Another reason could be the effort of government and other non-governmental organisations like ours which have decided that you need to educate the public for example, we have a project that says, ‘see something say something’. When you see something say it especially when it concerns issues of abuse of women and children.

Secondly, I wouldn’t know why a man would abuse a child. Probably because they see the children as people that cannot report them. If an adult is raped, she’d be able to say this is who did this to me but for a child, she may not be able to express such so they take undue advantage of them. So many people conjure a lot of spiritual reasons why they do that but I don’t believe in that. It has to do with people taking advantage of the innocence of children. The reason they give for raping women is that women go about naked. I wonder why a six month or two-year-old child cannot be naked before the father. If you cannot be vulnerable before your father or immediate family, who else would you be vulnerable to?

I also believe the judiciary is very slow in taking decisions regarding this. Most people have not been brought to justice. Whatever punishment available presently is inadequate compared to the rate at which it is happening. If anyone or anybody involved in rape or defilement, maybe 20 or 100 have been sentenced to jail, I’m sure people would know how serious the crime is. But because it takes a very long time for justice to be done, the crime goes on. Another reason could also be we concentrate so much on the victim than the perpetrator of the act. The lady who was raped is the one people point at but nobody focuses on the rapist so it is the patriarchal society where the man holds primary power but thank God things are beginning to change and we are saying when you see something you say it, don’t keep quiet. There is this culture of silence. People do not want disgrace of any sort. They don’t want their family to be put in the spotlight and as such, they try as much as they can not to talk about it for instance, mothers would know their husbands are sleeping with their daughters and they would not talk about it because they don’t want disgrace. When a man is acting irrationally, you have no reason to protect him. He’s already a disgrace so those are the factors. People are now beginning to speak out and there are community people who are saying no, this thing must not continue.

Recently, the legislature particularly the senate recommended death penalty for kidnappers. Shouldn’t rapists be given the same punishment?

Personally, I am not too comfortable with capital punishment but they can be sentenced to life imprisonment with serious hard labour. Let them go and rot in jail, that’s my own. I may not be in support of capital punishment but let them go there and understand that the freedom they enjoy is not something they should abuse. Rape has been with us since time immemorial. Brothers sleeping with sisters and all what not, it’s been there, it’s just that people don’t talk about it. What we are seeing now is people have become more vocal because they believe that if they talk about it help would come but we need to encourage the security agencies and the powers that be that it is a crime against the state and a crime against humanity. If they have more people being sentenced and announce it, it would serve as a deterrent to others. I don’t know why they would protect somebody who has been confirmed a pervert. The irony of it is that if you try to protect all these rapists they’d cause more harm in the community. So, why let them off the hook when no one knows who their next victim would be.

Your organisation, Women’s Rights and Health Project (WRAHP) has been at the forefront of advocacy for gender based violence; what do you think are the effects of rape on a minor?

The truth of the matter is that has been the angle we are looking at. Most of us concentrate on the victim but that child needs a lot of psychological and emotional healing because it affects her in various forms knowing full well that her biological being is not well-developed. If the child is defiled at that level, at 2 or so, she is going to have infection. Recently, I saw a child of four who was being defiled by her school principal and the mother didn’t know on time. The child who was very intelligent in school started doing poorly. A lot could happen to that child psychologically, emotionally and even physically because they often threaten the children that if they tell their parents, they’d die. ‘If you tell, your mummy or daddy will die’ and because children love their parents they would keep it to themselves. So, we need to remove that from the psyche of the children and treat them medically and psychologically.

Back in the day, rape wasn’t this pronounced but times have changed. Does it have anything to do with the dearth of our value system?

There’s no gainsaying the fact that our value system has seriously dropped and I also do not want to believe it is the globalisation thing. We have choices whether to accept it or not. Why don’t we look at all the positive things within the globalisation context and see it as a way of improving life. I also believe that people try to hide under a lot of things to perpetrate some of these acts. They hide under culture as well as tradition and all that in order to carry out these wicked exploits. I have seen someone who said when asked why he raped two girls that it was for spiritual growth so I don’t know how raping innocent girls of ten and twelve years of age would be for spiritual growth. So, these are some of the factors. Yes, the value system has actually dropped. People are no longer afraid and until some issues are properly addressed, we may have a long way to go in the fight against child abuse.