Child Sexual Abuse: When parents are dismissive

Very sad

“Don’t be ridiculous, you are lying.”

That was a mother’s response to her daughter who reported her being sexually abused as a child. She was 13 and this continued on an almost weekly basis for three years. This was Becky Vardy, the wife of Jamie Vardy revealing why her mother from whom she is estranged was not at her wedding and how the sexual abuse made her suicidal. [DailyMail]

Readers of my blog will be very well aware of the fact that I have written a lot about child sexual abuse, not only the act, the violation, but also the consequences. Consequences that many of us still live with and just have to cope with.

Difficult communication

It is difficult to imagine how hard it is for a child to go to their parent and tell them of being sexually violated by trusted people in our communities who could be relations, family friends, neighbours, teachers, clergy or professional people to whom our parents have entrusted our care.

The reaction of the parents to that shocking revelation can have lifelong consequences from estrangement to even suicide on the part of the child. The responsiveness of the parent can be the determinant of many things if they can get beyond the embarrassment, the shame, the indifference, the disbelief, the denial, or the dismissiveness to engage the child beyond just removing the treat and attending to the physical and mental healing of the child.

I was not dumb

In my own case, I never had the opportunity to tell my parents of the fact that I was being sexually abused because we never had the situational circumstances to have that kind of conversation. In my father’s demeanour towards his wards, he was strict, overbear and at times quite violent as a disciplinarian. Whilst it might have helped keep them in line, it also made him literally unapproachable because it engendered an atmosphere of fear.

In other areas, he could be critical, excoriating and dismissive, even as recently as a few months ago, when intimated of certain health challenges I had, there was a comparison and an almost indifference resulting in challenging why I had the frailty I had. There are too many instances of this lack of engagement that has affected our bonding.

To this day, except if he has read my blogs, he is still unaware that I had my first sexual experience at 7 and since then, there have been lifelong consequences. I was not dumb; we have just not gotten to the point where the talk is possible.

Scarred by religion

On the part of my mother, that is a different story. Steeped in religious excess that has affected everything else, we have not really found anything to accentuate the positive, rather we have constantly been at war with the seen and the unseen, the assumed and the implied, the fatuous and the bizarre.

It has been a trek through a wilderness full of beasts as we sought an oasis of peace, at times it was in itself a blessing and relief to be absent from all this.

Neither parent offered an inlet to converse on the things that affected me apart from the need to measure up to expectation and excel in comparison to others. Self-expression was operating within the bounds of their regulated control of activity I engaged in, bolstered by threat and punishment.

We find ways to cope

Then some expect us to have some convenient relationship in the twilight of their lives? Even if there was much to forgive, there is a lot more than cannot be undone, we have to seek safety in others who give us more reason to go on.

In the case of Becky Vardy, a loving husband and family, hopefully, a marriage that stands the test of time along with the psychological help she has received. To many more, maybe friends who give value and support that they do not come to any more harm than they have experienced before.

I started this blog to talk about the dismissiveness of parents to the sexual violation of their children, whatever else I have written between is part of the narrative and gives perspective to the spectrum of attitudes that form the reaction to such cases.

Child sexual abuse is damaging and its long-term effects are unquantifiable, we all find coping and self-preservation mechanism to get beyond it, others may never understand why the victims of abuse end up the way they are, act like they do. Still waters run deep, what you see at face value does not half reveal the story in the person.

What parents must do

It behoves parents today to create channels and opportunities for their children to talk about the most intimate things that affect them. The greater responsibility of the parent goes beyond provision; it involves most particularly the mental and emotional health of the child. Ignoring that will always have dire consequences.

Communicate and make it easier for the child to communicate. Do not wait, expect or assume that the child trusts that you will deal with issues in the best of ways, you have to pave the way for the child to trust wholeheartedly that they are safe with you, in every way.

Shine a Spotlight on child sexual abuse

Spotlight

On Monday, I returned to my local cinema to watch Spotlight which was about how the Boston Globe researched and published the scandal of clerical child sexual abuse and how the Catholic Church hierarchy shovelled suspect and accused paedophiles out of parishes where they had become lightning rods to other parishes where they continued the abuse of children.

Blog - Clerical child sex abuse was by human beings not the devil

The problem with exposing this atrocious abuse was that the establishment, the church, politicians, the courts, public officials and influential people stood in the way of getting this truth revealed.

The tenacity of the Spotlight investigative journalism team was not only laudable and commendable, after they published their findings and that included hundreds of articles, they were awarded The 2003 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Public Service. The winning work appears on the page linked.

Protecting the church from the abused

There many facets to the story, from the fact that the longest established human organisation of political and religious influence was more concerned about its reputation at the expense of kids who were corrupted, abused, robbed of their innocence, defiled and worse.

The idea that at least 6% of priests could be involved in child sexual abuse was not only shocking and alarming, it was blindingly unconscionable that the church was ready to save the perpetrators and pay for the silence of the victims. Anyone who tried to expose this criminality faced the onslaught of condemnation, ostracism and every kind of reputational assassination by direct or indirect agents of the church.

A 7-year old’s experience

I needed to watch this film because of my own experience of abuse, I was hardly 7 when I was called into the toilet by a relation and asked to do things I did not understand, and the lifelong effect of that experience on me is lasting even if I am not defined by the experience.

Blog - My Sex Post (2007)

What is more saddening is that some people who were trusted by my parents to care for us took sexual favours off us and there did not seem to be anywhere for us to find redress or healing, we were bruised, hurt and damaged by a loss of innocence and childhood.

Maybe, if I had the opportunity to talk to my 7-year old self again, I would have immediately run to my parents to report these violations despite the terror I felt from my abusers, the need to be heard, sympathised with and protected by my parents.

Blog - Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians

What the abused are up against

Then, back to Spotlight, the abused children faced even more insurmountable challenges, groomed by respected and respectable stalwarts of religion in their communities, where especially from deprived circumstances mothers were either naïve or conniving in allowing these men to access their children and abuse them, the children were caught in a vortex of wrongs stacked against them in all aspects of life.

Blog - Nigeria: How We Sacrifice Our Children to Paedophiles

Despite near and far relations, servants not a few, getting their way with me, I sometimes feel I was spared the vicissitudes of fortune that other abused children experienced from the clergy, in orphanages, in borstal and prisons, in the hands of evil paedophiles who stopped at nothing until they had murdered their quarry.

As the film ended, and the postscripts came on screen about the many places where clerical child sexual abuse had been confirmed, screen after screen revealed a city and somewhere amongst those names was Akure, Nigeria.

I wept for the many like me

I have always been of the opinion that despite the exhaustive exposé of these abuses in the West, we have not begun to unearth with any seriousness this clerical criminality in Africa, South America or Asia.

This along with many unreported defilements and rapes of minors, the atrocity of child marriages – girls given to the enterprise of sexual predators who have found the veneer of religion and customs to support their propensity to incurable paedophilia in the institution of marriage are things we still fail to address with the singlemindedness of saving the child from all harm.

I watched the credits of Spotlight sobbing almost uncontrollably because I knew from the depictions that many children never got to tell their stories, some committed suicide, most lives were irretrievably damaged, very few found the platform to relentlessly go after the people who abused them against all odds.

The damage is hardly understood

Nothing can ever restore the innocence of a child so abused, no restitution can fully recompense for the way society has acquiesced to allowing abuse to go on unchecked and no punishment can fully atone for the sexual abuse of minors, yet we must acknowledge these sexual predators exist amongst us, no matter how highly placed and that they must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ...

Blog - Thought Picnic: Fucked-up, but coping well

We all owe the children a duty to be ready to protect, ready to listen and ready to understand what they face when approached, groomed and abused. It must not be mentioned amongst us again that children are sexual fodder for people who will be protected from any sanction and essentially granted the immunity for the impunity to lasciviously prey on helpless kids.

Shine the Spotlight on all abuse and refuse for it to continue a minute longer.

Nigeria: On the abandonment of Hope, 2, accused of witchcraft

Let Hope be seen

The picture was haunting and it was heartrending, one of a seriously emaciated boy being fed from a water bottle by a heavily tattooed Caucasian lady on a street in Nigeria. [Independent]

The boy who got given the name Hope could hardly be 2 years old and was apparently thrown into the streets by his ‘parents’ because something, someone, somewhere had convinced them that he was a witch.

I am of the opinion that we really have no witches in Nigeria, my idea of a witch is one who commands certain supernatural powers for the spectacular, like something out of the Exorcist.

We create Hope daily

However, what we have in Nigeria is collusion to do evil, the vague dread of the supernatural according to the words of Lord Lugard and a complete ignorance of mental illness. This is compounded by the activities of evil, malicious and outrageously malevolent people who have built a reputation on trading on the fears, anxieties and misfortunes of the public by choosing the easy target of stigmatising children as witches and wizards.

Once the public is mesmerised by the preaching of these false prophets, purveyors of heresies and unspeakable evil, children become the brunt of their frustration leading to heinous physical abuse and the torture of children in the guise of exorcism and consequently the abandonment of children like Hope.

Rescuing Hope

It is a sad reflection on our society in 2015, that it has taken a Danish woman to take this child off the streets and nurse him back to health. Anja Ringgren Loven is before anyone screams White Saviour Complex, the new Mary Slessor in the self-same regional community just over a century ago where twins were put to death for the ignorance of the biology of reproduction.

Anja Ringgren Loven runs the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) which she founded with her husband David and it now homes 34 children rescued from the consequences of religiously-inspired superstition that majors in stigmatisation rather than emancipation of spirit, soul and body.

The abusers of Hope

I have in times past written about the evil ministry of a self-described apostle Helen Ukpabio who thankfully was expunged from the UK before she had the time to spew out her venomously hurtful sermons that castigate the vulnerable to enhance her reputation. It is my view that anyone who uses religion to incite violence against the vulnerable, especially children should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and taken off our streets.

We are so far behind in understanding and protecting the rights of the child, our womenfolk, and the disabled and other minority groups in our society. What we cannot afford in our quest to leave the primitive for the civilised is to allow the likes of this apostle of wrath to thrive in any part of our society.

Many a Hope helped

The picture of Hope and Anja has captured our hearts and hopefully it will capture our minds and our actions, all that have by misfortune and circumstance been given the rotten lot of Hope, find loving, caring, hopeful and encouraging places of succour to become healthy and wealthy members of our greater humanity.

I could not find a website for the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF), it would have offered an opportunity for us to contribute to the work of this amazing Good Samaritan organisation.

Making better Hope stories

However, the biggest challenge we face is the need for us as individuals and as a society to begin to think for ourselves about what kind of society we want to be by addressing the various issues of abuse and ignorance. We need to apply more rational thinking to the use of religion for the betterment of humanity rather than for the ostracism of the vulnerable.

Most importantly, we need to stop condoning evil practices done in the name of religion, culture, tradition or some belief system, if it hurts even the smallest amongst us, we have failed as a people and we need to repent of our tolerance of this and work for meaningful change to give everyone a chance to participate in our humanity rather than be victims of the mobs we join with to mete our Neanderthal violence.

We have a choice to let the children laugh and thrive amongst us and see less of the situation that brought Hope into focus.

Opinion: The Very Ugly Fall of Constance Briscoe

An ugly fall

It gives me no pleasure to write about Constance Briscoe today who from her position of influence and personal allegiance has become of casualty of a dispute that has taken too many people to gaol.

Just over 5 years ago, I wrote about her when her mother took her to court for libel, because in a book she published titled Ugly, she wrote of presumed abuse and cruelty she suffered at the hands of her mother.

Blog - Mother's love or daughter's hate

A vengeful plot

What makes Constance Briscoe’s case one of great personal tragedy was she had become an establishment figure and by that would have been a great role model to have been one of the first black female recorders when she was appointed in 1996.

However, she got entangled in the acrimonious divorce of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce, the latter who in the quest to make her ex-husband pay for his infidelity, got ensnared, and in the process suffered basically a similar fate as her husband, they both went to jail.

Constance Briscoe as a part-time judge should have known better, but as a friend of Vicky Pryce joined in the scorned fury of a deserted wife attempting to pervert the course of justice, providing false statements and much else to take Chris Huhne down.

Positional hubris

Obviously, Constance Briscoe must have thought her elevated position would isolate her from suspicion of impropriety and abuse, but the story reads like a Greek tragedy and possibly a telling tale of consequence in relation to what retribution might obtain from making a public show of our parents.

She would be going to jail for twice the time the person she helped, that's Vicky Pryce, went to jail for. For all the brilliance and ability of Constance Briscoe until she entered into that vengeful pact with Vicky Pryce, there is probably a character flaw in both women that they exploited to the full, and with it came shame and disgrace.

A salutary lesson

No one ends up the better for pursuing a vendetta, neither is there real satisfaction in seeking revenge. All participants get hurt and when that is looked at in the bigger story of life and some memories we bring to the fore that could possibly falsely accuse our parents of abuses they never committed – what comes around does eventually go around.

Apparently, the libel case brought on by the mother is still in court and because of this conviction, every other area where the integrity and honour of Constance Briscoe mattered, is now put to question, including the claims that she was abused by her mother.

It is a tragedy, a great one at that, and I am so sorry for all that have suffered, just because some people could not walk away from their irreconcilable differences without seeking to ruin others first.

Other material

Blog - Thought Picnic: Earning the Pryce of Revenge in England   

England: They will not go unpunished

We will punish

Repeatedly, as my heart bled with anguish and horror at the news of little children that died at the hands of their parents, I was never fully satisfied with the justice that punished the horrors, but it was justice all the same.

Today, it was the turn of Amanda Hutton to go to jail, for the death of 4-year old Hamzah Khan, who she cruelly starved to death and then left mummified in his cot for nearly two years.

For her cruelty charged as manslaughter, child cruelty and preventing the lawful burial of a child, she will go to jail for 15 years and that can never be long enough for the harrowing, reprehensible and disgraceful circumstances that greeting the dying days of Hamzah that could have been for years.

Placing the responsibility right

There is no way to fully understand why a mother could be so evil beyond words having altogether had six children, the oldest of which is 24 years old who received a suspended sentence of 2 years for preventing the burial of his brother.

I am glad that the findings did not give her a bye on the possibility of diminished responsibility, but held her responsible fully for the heinous crimes against her son.

Rights even in death

As with Victoria Climbié, Peter Connelly (Baby P), Daniel Pelka and the 6 Philpott children who perished in a fire set by their own parents, we as a society will not stand for the abuse of children by their parents and guardians, and though we might have failed to prevent their abuse, we will not fail in punishing the perpetrators.

Each face and name is testament that these children, even if not precious and beautiful in the eyes of the people we expect to unconditionally love them, they have a right to have a voice for justice in the hope that less of this becomes the regular news of our times.

Lawful burials

We must have lessons to learn of these events for early intervention where abuse is suspected and for more intrusive official enquiry where a child appears to be in danger.

I never knew there was a crime of preventing the lawful burial of the dead – an unusual crime, in fact, I take that back; the heir to the Tetrapak fortune, Hans Kristian Rausing, was charged with that crime in 2012 for not burying his wife who had been dead for months.

May the souls of those dear children rest in peace; I do hope no other child is suffering today like these have suffered before.

Thinking of Daniel Pelka

A pro-choice point

If there were better interventionist policies that were predicated on unconditional love providing the best of parental care to children born into dire, indifferent, violent or extremely atrocious situations, I might have found myself waving flags and placards in the front of abortion clinics speaking against abortion.

Our reality indicates there is no such Utopian environment to fundamentally offload the circumstances that present abortion as an option some people might take for all sorts of reasons.

Unloved in this world

This introduction stems from a number of situations in the UK where children have been born into some of the most harrowingly wicked homes, where the children’s guardians take on the demonic mantle of depriving the child of every semblance of care, fun, happiness, joy and even life for reasons I cannot yet understand even if I were completely devoid of any humanity.

The case of Daniel Pelka represents a feeling that hell might well be an amusement park and the poor child saw more than hell.

Nothing is said of the circumstances in which Daniel was born and that is patently beside the point, he had a mother who starved him, almost drowned him, brutalised him and eventually killed him whilst his mother’s partner acquiesced, if not participated in the evil enterprise.

Unconscionable evil

The only place where I have seen such behaviour is amongst primates where a silverback will attempt to kill the offspring of a nursing gorilla in order to bring her into season to have his way. If I suggested Magdelena Luczak, 27, and her partner Mariusz Krezolek, 34 where worse than wild animals in human skin, I will not be far off the mark.

The unmitigated cruelty to Daniel Pelka mirrors what we saw of Peter Connelly, Baby P, a few years before, where the system failed the child who suffered more than 50 injuries over an 8-month period.

Before that, it was Victoria Climbié, creating a catalogue of guardianship criminality that can find no words of expression close to describing the hell those children went through.

Some justice

It is not just the fact that the children were unloved or probably unwanted but that their guardians especially in the documented text messages of Daniel Pelka’s guardians had no restraint in planning and executing their tortuous sadistic cruelty against defenceless kids for their pleasure or satisfaction.

No justice can be sufficient to punish for the world Daniel came to find himself and if there is a heaven, I will hope that he finds the greatest care and love imaginable to wipe away the sorrow and pain that was his unfortunate lot when he lived 4 short years on earth.

It would have probably been better he was not born because no child on God’s good earth regardless of situation, circumstance, providence or misfortune should suffer the way Victoria, Peter or Daniel suffered and I am glad that our society is still moved enough to ensure that anyone party to such evil will be severely punished for crime that are fundamentally against humanity.

Just because the children are defenceless in life and have been failed by the system does not mean that society will not act to seek redress, retribution and punishment of the perpetrators of evil that contemns our humanity.

May Daniel rest in peace.

Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians

My troubles in me

As I sat on the train on my way back to North Wales this evening I began to think about things that have happened to me that probably would not have become big problems further on in my life if I had someone who could help to talk to then.

Some might wonder if my childhood was as idyllic as I have so painted it in many blogs before, what could have left me tongue-tied on more personal and emotional issues that I have now acquired the knack for writing about now.

Under their noses

Indeed, I had an enchanted childhood, we lacked for nothing materially and we had much freedom and the support of extended family and servants for the convenience of my parents and ourselves, we had it good.

However, within that somewhat safe setting, we lost our innocence and were exploited by those who were supposed to care for us and somehow we never seemed to pluck up the courage against threat and fear to approach our guardians to put a stop to the atrocities.

Unresolved emotional baggage

In the end and I think I speak for many, we have carried humongous emotional baggage into our adulthood where many are still trying to get some sort of normalcy in their lives and existence hoping the situation if we have learnt the better of our past does not become a vicious cycle of the failings that we then pass on to our wards.

It goes without saying and people of our parents’ generation probably thought children had no emotional problems, we could be seen but not be heard, we were to listen but never to engage in discussion, we ran errands but our latitude for initiative was constrained to a modal expectation of the best behaviour we were to acquire even if we had no example of such character.

Tradition gave voice and truth to the older, it gave honour and absolution to the community leader and if the child ever did have a voice that got heard, at home it was trouble and in school it was radical – in both cases curtailment came through corporal punishment, the child was moulded by stripes and pain – a cuddle or a kiss was a sign of weakness, whilst encouragement if any was never effusive for the fear that the child might become big-headed.

Fear for respect

I was however taken aback but the resonance of a tweet I sent on the train which read thus – “When our parents confused our fear of them with our respect of them, they lost the many times we could have confided in them.”

Our fear of our guardians was supposed to be a moderating influence on our behaviour, the fear of rebuke and harsh discipline apparently made us think of the consequences of our actions the inference was our fear was a sign of respect but what that also did was it raised barriers to interaction and conversation where it was necessary, we have internalised much hurt and abuse until when we have the independence to give voice to what could have festered for decades.

Break that chain

It is interesting that this issue is not just identified with cultures I am quite familiar with because even in Spain lenticular printed posters are being put up that reveal at a child’s eye-level what adults would not see at their eye-level, information about who they could call if they do need to confide in someone.

Sadly, everywhere somewhere a child cared for by someone does not necessarily have the sympathetic ear of that person on the deeper issues of life – questions, concerns, troubles and fears – we must break that chain and refuse to allow the damage we have experienced become a generational heirloom handed down to those that follow us.

Opinion: The Challenge of Rearing Nigerian Children Abroad

An embarrassment of heritage

I was rather discomfited by the news of the conviction of 8 teenagers yesterday for the killing of another teenager in 2010.

There are issues with gang warfare and disputes in London but the brazenness with which these youngsters carried out their assault on another in plain public view leaves one wondering what our society has become.

One teenager stood in the middle of the road wielding a samurai sword and they ended up chasing the victim into a busy London Underground Station where they as many as 15 in number attacked, stabbed, kicked and punched the poor 15-year old Sofyen Belamouadden to death.

That is bad enough, but when I read the names of the perpetrators involved, I feel a sense of eerie familiarity as Junior Bayode, Obi Nwokeh, Christopher Omoregie, Samsom  Odegbune, Femi Oderinwale and Victoria Osoteku all appear to have Nigerian surnames.

They have some Nigerian connection

That is not to say that these people are Nigerian, but one can safely assume they have some connection with Nigeria by reason of parentage and possibly heritage.

The other two might well have Nigerian connections but that is not evident from their names. What bothers me is what the parents and guardians of these kids might have been up to that their wards have ended up on the extreme side of the law having congregated with impunity in the mob act of killing someone else in plain view.

I appreciate that these kids might never have visited Nigeria or experienced what many might call a traditional Nigerian upbringing that gives the parent licence to brutalise their wards in what we broadly call discipline but discipline in and of itself cannot just be corporal punishment – we need to adapt the tools of affirmation and chastisement to the societies we find ourselves in.

Adapting parenting influence

Whereas in Nigeria it is probably enough to dispatch parental responsibility by just being a provider of shelter, food, education and basic welfare, the differences in societal values and expectations mean that parents have to be more involved in attending to the emotional needs of their wards and this is something many might not have found examples of in their own upbringing.

I dare say, where ethnic minorities fail to integrate congregating in conurbations of ghettoised indifference, they shirk in the fundamental responsibility of understanding the pressures their wards face and the society in which they wards are growing – religion and social events amongst ourselves are not enough, we cannot recreate our local villages abroad and hope that it will suffice – it does not.

Just because we cannot bring our kids up the “Nigerian” way does not absolve us of our responsibility in society to bring our kids to respect the rule of law, the dignity of labour and the earning of respect through purposeful activity rather than menace – gangs are fundamentally antithetical to this thinking and one can say it arises because parents are absent from what they are supposed to be doing.

Misguided parental goals

Over the last few years, I have found too many instances where kids of Nigerian heritage have been victims or perpetrators of violent crime, if we must have children in foreign societies it behoves us to exert ourselves to bring them up in environments where they are first not under threat and then not influenced by negative role models.

The preoccupation with keeping up appearances and status in our marooned Diaspora communities when the greater task of separation and integration is of essence for the sake of our children is atrocious – children are better inspired and encouraged by aspirational guardians who provide positive role models that their wards can emulate.

A parenting challenge

It is all too easy to suggest children have become wayward and are the black sheep of the family but if their formative years were spent under a responsible adult’s care and hopefully guidance, then that is probably where things also went wrong – what children end up becoming does not occur in a vacuum.

Looking at those 6 Nigerian names, should be a warning shot across the bows of ethnic parenthood in foreign lands that your involvement is pertinent, that the game plan for child rearing cannot follow the script we once had or experienced back at home and that we cannot spend all hours in the pursuit of filthy lucre if we want the peace of children who will in future go on to live successful, independent lives away from unsavoury encounters with the law and the shame that it brings.

Tough Parenting Truths Living in the UK

Nigerians in contrast

I attended a church function on Saturday where they were celebrating their fifth year anniversary and they had laid out a three-day event to commemorate the occasion. Having lived in the Netherlands for 12 years and now in the UK with the fact that I attended a very international church where the communication was bilingual, this setting was a bit unfamiliar to me.

I sometimes find myself in amazingly contrasting worlds and none could have been as stark as the Buddhist funeral I attended on Friday and this Pentecostal Christian event I was attending on Saturday.

Our affinities

My presence was by reason of my gracious hosts in the UK and by far my closest family in Europe, they are quite involved in the close-knit community of the church where, for the affinities of extended relations, my nephew and my niece are members of the choir apart from him being an accomplished artiste in his own right.

As we dispensed with the formalities of genuflection and greetings with every Nigerian attention to pomp, ceremony and pageantry, we were told the session would be a seminar on ‘Parenting’ and the main speakers were to be a judge and a social worker.

The judge - Justice Ola Omotosho was, I was informed, the first Judge of Nigerian descent appointed to the bench in the UK.

Views from the bench

Justice Ola Omotosho gave us an interesting perspective of life on the bench and the kinds of cases she has to deal with, along with the sympathies of being an ethnic minority with the duty of interpreting the laws that appear to change too frequently for anyone to keep up with.

However, addressing more pertinent matters, she clarified that having the status of “Indefinite Leave to Remain” in the UK does not confer British citizenship rights that when such persons enter the crime and punishment system, the presumption is to deal with them as foreign nationals and the status will be withdrawn in favour of deportation.

She also explained that whilst there might be extenuating circumstances in terms of the length of stay in the UK mitigating the appeal of a deportation order, however, these situations are rare and are dealt with on an individual basis.

The fallacy of proxy marriages

Being of Nigerian heritage, it is understandable that her fellow judges would seek her opinion on certain issues that they might not fully understand by reason of cultural, traditional or religious differences and they can expect that, as a judge, she will be forthright, honest and frank with her views.

One area she suggested is turning into a scam is the issue of proxy marriages, where the families and relations of the partners in the marriage gather in foreign lands to conduct the supposed marriage ceremony whilst lawyers in the UK print out certificates meant to facilitate the immigration regularisation process.

She said lawyers come up with tall tales to presumably help desperate people who easily part with their money and still end up with no solutions. The system eventually gets wise about all these tricks, the moment the numbers indicate something is amiss.

The plight of stateless children

Then she talked about the issue of stateless children who would have arrived in the UK as young kids and although their parents might have all the legal statuses to remain in the UK, the residence status of their children is left unresolved.

The problems emerge when, sadly, the child encounters the law or ructions in the family lead to the child being kicked out of their home. Without the necessary papers that give them a legal status in the UK, such children get caught in a legal status limbo where they can get no help and risk avoidable deportation.

Basically, she was saying above all else, confirming the status of your children should be of the highest priority at the earliest opportunity.

From discipline to abuse to jail

Then she touched on the matter of abuse and the fact that children have rights that are protected and defended by the state. Abusive parents who run afoul of the law will almost certainly go to jail and that the law was not partial to the idea that the purpose of discipline that became abuse was to preserve the family unit.

One last point she made was about spousal abuse, as far as she was concerned, regardless of being Christian, she had no sympathy for any circumstances of domestic violence and her candid advice was for the abused to get out of that relationship. By implication, there was nothing godly about a marriage where there was no mutual respect and the presence of abuse.

The right to well-being of a child

The Social Worker who is also a pastor addressed the matter of abuse defining it as anything that impacts on the well-being of a child and that included physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, neglect and abdication of parental responsibility.

She was at pains to suggest that the authorities will get involved and investigate all claims, as the judge said earlier; no one wants a Baby P scenario on their hands again.

Unlike in Nigeria, a child's word has equal weight as that of an adult before the law and lying will not help the situation because the authorities will seek to determine root causes.

Provision is not love

I found the seminar quite refreshing and to hear establishment figures of Nigerian heritage be so forthright was quite a first for me.

The Social Worker stressed the need for parental involvement in all aspects of the child's development and most of all having a reward system as part of the discipline mix and that parents need to show more love to their children.

I would have liked for the issue of love to be dealt with better, especially clarifying that provision is not love. The provision of shelter, food, clothing, education, parental care and protection to the child are responsibilities the society expects of the parent or guardian towards their wards but these are outward expressions that do not necessarily fulfil a child’s need for love which is an emotional investment on the part of the parent.

Integrate or face disintegration

The subtext of the seminar was not lost on me, the tendency for ethnic minorities not to integrate and understand their host societies along with the differences between customs and laws leaves many learning very hard lessons that reach into the wider community.

There is no doubt that the pastors at the church wanted to speak to a particular demographic either directly or indirectly as the judge was even gracious enough to suggest that most of her advice might not pertain to the audience attending but to our friends.

Having heard what was shared at the seminar the more apt title of the seminar would have in my view been ‘Tough Parenting Truths Living in the UK.’

Acknowledgement: This is the first blog that I have engaged a ‘sub-editor’ to review before posting. He annotated the blog, made punctuation and spelling corrections whilst advising me to refine certain paragraphs for clarity and concision.

In view of that, I thank Mike Sutton for taking the time to review this piece and making it better than I could have attempted a few times over.

Opinion: The Cultural Ghettos of Parenting in Diaspora

I could have been a lawyer

If I had not taken that decision to switch from the liberal arts and social sciences to pure science and mathematics in the second term of the penultimate year of my secondary school education, I might well have become a lawyer with the career path towards becoming a judge.

Nothing excites me more than to read the conclusions of judges when delivering judgements on socially sensitive issues. The clarity of thought that is presented in the simplicity of expression leaves no one in doubt as to the persuasion that inspired their words.

I have worked with lawyers before and any legal drama in television especially Perry Mason has always caught my fascination.

Cultural parenting in Diaspora

Sadly, the cases I will refer to in this blog pertain to parenting issues of immigrant communities in the United Kingdom that need scrutiny and addressing. There have been too many instances of cruelty towards children meted out in brutalisation passing for discipline, honour killings to restore parental honour in their communities, Female Genital Mutilation, witchcraft stigmatisation, bizarre and macabre rituals, to mention just a few.

Parents who have come within the crosshairs of the law have usually claimed racial prejudice and a miscarriage of justice. They protest that they are innocent and though there is nothing on God’s good earth that can justify their actions, the rights their children may not have in their home countries in what we delusionally call 'our culture' are all too well protected in the West.

Children have rights

The first lesson any immigrant parent must learn by observation or through coercion is a child in the West has rights and the State where those rights are found to have been violated will prosecute the parents to the full extent of the law.

Whilst one can understand the fears of parents who have in their own upbringing have been given the big stick and very little carrot. I dare say, the emphasis is more on size of carrot and when it is offered in the West – it can be more than just effective, the relationship that stems from love rather than the duty of parental provision – most Western kids are not unruly, ill-disciplined, uncontrollable and disastrously beyond redemption.

You’re now in Rome

The narrative is the same in many immigrant communities, the parents come from a country with different cultures and practices to live in the West, they have their children born and bred in the West, the children might be aware of their parents' heritage but they are essentially Westerners in mind, outlook, expression and culture.

No amount of community activity apart from the core environment of the home country is going to turn those children into cultural carbon-copies of their parents. As they say, when in Rome, do as Romans do.

Integrate or lose out

Again, one can understand the comfort a sense of community provides people, but like I have written many times before, these communities have a tendency to ghettoise to the extent that they become time-capsules of practices from home countries that probably have been jettisoned decades ago.

Parents who fail to integrate properly in host countries are at risk of first running afoul of the law leaving them unprepared for seriously dire consequences – brutalisation and murder leading to long terms of imprisonment – all of which could have been completely avoidable.

The honest truth is those who fail to integrate end up not being able to cope with the cultural clashes they face and they take out their frustrations on their usually vulnerable children who are caught between the freer world beyond their doors and the hell at their homes – it need not be so.

What horror!

In the case of the Nigerian couple [1] jailed for brutalising their six children, it is a damning indictment of parenthood to have a 9-year old write. “My mum is the worst mum ever because she can’t cope with five of us, her broken hand and being pregnant. She always leaves me out so I always starve and I am forced to work. If I don’t get enough house work done, I am beaten without mercy with the wooden end of a broom. I have scars all over me to prove it. I can’t stay here. I would like a new mum.” Your heart just bleeds. I can honestly say, this is not Nigerian culture, it is just wickedness.

However, the one pertaining to Pakistani parents who murdered [2] their daughter for thwarting their desire to put her into a forced married in what is commonly known as an “honour killing” just shows what many children could face in the West.

Just beyond reason

The Sentencing Remarks [3 PDF] of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed should be classic text for the reading of any parent in an immigrant community – what reads as so particular here is as general as you can have an assessment of issues of parenting in Diaspora.

The first question he asks sets the tone for what follows. “What was it that brought you two – her parents, the people who had given her life – to the point of killing her?”

Her father who apparently had lived in the United Kingdom from the age of 10 probably suffered what many multi-cultural kids suffer in being told that they are not this or that enough. Having first married a Danish lady, had issue and even lived in Denmark, there is no doubt that he had adopted Western customs and values until he returned to Pakistan to marry a village girl who appeared to roll back his years of Westernisation to the customs of rural Pakistan.

Pakistan in Warrington

The judge being almost too perceptive for words continues – “You chose to bring up your family in Warrington but, although you lived in Warrington, your social and cultural attitudes were those of rural Pakistan and it was those which you imposed upon your children.”

“Shafilea was a determined, able and ambitious girl who wanted to live a life which was normal in the country and in the town in which you had chosen to live and bring up your children. However, you could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to live.”

The judge clearly identifies with Shafilea here as what you would expect of a child; any child regardless of parental heritage born and bred in the UK. The life she wanted to life was normal for the town and country she lived in and that is where the conflicts with a distant, unknown, strange and alien rural Pakistan of her parents knew began.

“You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington. Although she went to local schools, you objected to her socialising with girls from what has been referred to as “the white community”. You objected to her wearing western clothes and you objected to her having contact with boys.”

The short paragraph above with what I have highlighted “Pakistan in Warrington” or “Nigeria in Peckham” is a kinder reference to the immigrant ghettos that foist strange and stringent adherence to alien community standards on the parents. The subtext here is that the United Kingdom is a white-majority country, you cannot bring your children up cocooned from that reality and culture.

Children need a reference point

“She was being squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose upon her.” The children sadly have no reference point for what the parents believe in.

“Your problem was that, in what you referred to as your “community”, Shafilea’s conduct was bringing shame upon you and your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than your love of you (sic) child.”

Therein is the real sad chapter of this heart-rending tale, the willingness of the parents to sacrifice their child on the altar of a belief system or way of life that meant more to them than the love for their child.

To have killed their daughter in the presence of her siblings and successfully used that terror to make them adhere and conform to what was literally an oath of silence for over 7 years is as evil as any parent can get.

In conclusion

For them, I really have no sympathy, there is much else the judge said that could be read in the judgement but the points I want to make are clear.

Parenthood comes with great responsibilities and along with that should be a good understanding of the environment in which your children are growing up. For them to be well-adjusted in their upbringing, it is important that the children recognise in their parents what they also see about them.

Most crucially, the children have rights, rights that will be defended to the utmost by the State; that is part of what civilisation is about, giving everyone born into this world a sense of dignity, pride and respect from the cradle to the grave.

Sources

[1] Nigerian couple who beat their 6 children and gave the baby a morphine overdose jailed. | mailOnline

[2] Shafilea Ahmed's parents jailed for her murder | The Guardian

[3] The Sentencing Remarks of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed | Chester Crown Court | Judiciary of England and Wales - PDF

Child Sexual Abuse: Have you been outraged enough?

Revulsion beyond words

Three years and a day to the day I wrote a blog about the apparent absence of outrage to reports and incidences of child sexual abuse, I find myself on the topic again.

This time, the news broke on Twitter about a video circulating of a 14-year old girl having sex with a 4-year old boy. The information shared in the 8 or so tweets was graphic enough with nothing left to the imagination – I was almost sick.

Then to muster the innermost bits of revulsion a human-being could dare to gather, a link was posted to the video for the apparent viewing of others and maybe for their titillation, excitement or just plain curiosity – it was absolutely wrong to do.

Is there any adult supervision

I am left aghast at the apparent lack of outrage and in some case the particular and peculiar interest in this video by some who should for all intents and purposes know better.

To think that someone on observing this devilishly heinous and criminal act thought it better to record the event and then post the recording online is beyond belief, it leaves me speechless and wondering if our society has suddenly become bereft of adult supervision.

I know issues of child sexual abuse are complex and difficult, too many times the perpetrators have walked free, the victims only getting physical examinations with no attention to their mental state or welfare and everyone will rather the whole matter were hushed up than report the issue, start criminal proceedings and face that unfortunate stigma that ensues.

Uncomfortable truths

We have to come to some decision on these matters because a good deal of the sexual abuse I encountered and those I have learnt of occurred under the roofs of places where children are supposed to be safe and secure –in their parents’ homes – one will think there is no safer place for a child to be and yet it is within that setting that many children have been sexually abused.

We also have to address another issue which is that of boys being sexually abused by females. It happens a lot and many think to have lost your sexual innocence to heterosexual sex being guided by a more mature female is a good thing. The fundamental is this – a child is still a child is still a child and if that kind of education was wholesome, legal and wonderful, it would be on the curriculum – it is NOT!

Children should not be having sex. Period!

Give ‘em therapy too

There is enough information out there about sexually abused children rarely growing up to have fulfilling and wholesome sexual lives. Many have taken serious sexual risks that have led to more complicated and damaged lives, sadly, the Genesis of such lifestyles are buried too deep in the psyches for remedial intervention except for some miraculous touch.

It goes without saying that we need to become more amenable to therapy, any one child who has been touched, violated or sexually abuse needs to be offered therapy, counselling and some additional comfort and help.

We do not just forget these things as time rolls by, we are literally marked by our experiences and even if we do not recall the horrors of abuse or the pleasures, if you may of pederasty, the amazing inner recesses of our memory have made an indelible record of the abuse and the lack of essential support that should have been offered at that time.

There needs to be more outrage – no child should have to suffer any kind of sexual abuse without the perpetrators being brought to book and the child getting all the medical, physiological and psychological help and welfare that can be gathered for their support.