Man nabbed for raping girl, 10, in church

For more than a year after her father abandoned them, Rashida (not real name) found solace in a nearby church in her neighbourhood of Tudun Wada in Lugbe area of Abuja.
The ten-year-old, her mother and three siblings called the Christ Apostolic Church in the area home: when the congregation closed from worship, the family bedded down for the night and every other night between the hundreds of plastic chairs that crowded the church.
Then in September, her solace and sleeping quarters turned horror on a night when a man broke in through the church window, clamped a hand over her mouth and raped her. The night of September 30 is forever etched in the ten-year-old’s mind. Her mother had gone “to the mountain”—a vigil that required her to attend service at some other branch away from where the family called home.
“I left them inside the church,” remembers Joke Adeboye, Rashida’s mother. The girl and her three siblings went to sleep, along with another woman simply named as Mama Laji in the area. An older child had been given out as housemaid to a pastor earlier.
“It was around one,” recalled Rashida, a primary-three pupil. “All of us were asleep.”
Mama Laji got up to take a leak outside the church, it would later be realized. Power was out. And the lantern Adeboye had left burning beside her children had since gone out.
No one thought anything was amiss until a man’s hand clamped over Rashida’s mouth in the dark. “He then told me that if I tell anybody, he’s going to kill me,” Rashida said. Then the man raped the girl in the dark.
She didn’t even see the face of her rapist. He was done before Mama Laji returned and slunk off to hide among the drum set, leaving Rashida curled up on the floor.
It was the sound of furtive movement in the dark that alerted Mama Laji. “She asked, who is walking there. The person did not answer,” said Rashida. “She called me. ‘Rashida, Rashida, stand up.’ I told her my legs hurt, I cannot stand up.”
With neither torchlight nor a lantern, Mama Laji turned on her mobile phone. By its light, she neared the drum set close to the church altar.
“She said, ‘who is in this drum set?’” said Rashida. “The person then stood up. That’s when I noticed it was the person who slept with me.”
The person was a neighbour, a married father of three living in a building next to the church. His single-room apartment window looked onto one of the church windows. He was identified simply as Ifeanyi, but is more known by the name of his first child.
Mama Laji questioned, “‘Papa Mmesoma, what are you doing here?’” Rashida remembers of that night. “The person did not answer. The woman told him to go outside, then she called the wife of the church pastor.”
“It was when the woman put the light on his face, that’s when I knew he was the one.”
Witnesses said he put back the grill he had taken off the window and walked out.
But Rashida, scared, didn’t admit anything happened. Even though the man’s wife, when confronted admitted she hadn’t seen her husband in bed beside her at around one that night of September 30, but said he returned at past two and wouldn’t say where he had been, a neighbour who didn’t want to be named said.
The next day, Rashida was running a fever, which became an excuse, said the neighbour. “On Second October, I noticed she was walking funny. I asked about it. Her mother said [Rashida] was ill.” The neighbour, a motherly sort who had helped the family secure a kiosk near her home was suspicious. She got a nurse sister and Rashida into a room for examination.
“He said he will kill me,” Rashida cried when the nurse touched her. With the aid of a torchlight and gloves, the nurse found bruises along the ten-year-old’s vagina.
“Rashida broke down, and then said, ‘Mummy, the man touched me that night. He held my mouth and he said if I tell anybody, he’s going to kill me,’” the neighbour related.
Things went downhill from there. Women rushed to the man’s home and raised alarm; his wife tried to calm them. They went on straight to a nearby police station in Tudun Wada, got transferred to Lugbe.
On October 3, neighbours called Human Rights officials, who ran a separate examination. The next day, three police officers came for Ifeanyi’s arrest and moved his case to the police area office at Area 10.
It is understood Human Rights officials are working to instigate prosecution against Papa Mmesoma for violation of a minor. (For the same reason, her name was changed to protect her identity). But officials have been unavailable to comment on the state of their investigation.
His family also refused to comment when contacted.
*Weekly Trust