Child Sexual Abuse: Felicia Ogbuja is justly going to jail

They abused their ward

I was first outraged when I read a tweet that appeared to conflate two separate though intrinsically related issues regarding child sexual abuse, safeguarding, duty of care, the obstruction of an investigation that could have led to justice and in the middle of it all the resulting death of a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Miss Ochanya Ogbanje. [Premium Times: Ochanya: State court acquits husband of raping minor, federal court convicts wife of negligence]

Felicia Ochiga-Ogbuja was the aunt(-in-law) of the deceased, and her alleged child-abusing husband, Andrew Ogbuja; a lecturer at the Benue State Polytechnic, her alleged child-abusing son, Victor Ogbuja; who is currently a fugitive from justice, are maternal relations of the deceased, meaning the former was her uncle and the latter was her first cousin, mentioned also is Winifred Ogbuja, another first cousin of the deceased. Ochanya Ogbanje had left the village to live with relations of her mother to be cared for and supported in her education by this family.

They terrorised their ward

Whilst the chronology of events is not clearly established, it would appear that Winifred had informed her mother Felicia of the ongoing sexual abuse of Ochanya by both Andrew and Victor which Felicia failed to stop and had apparently threatened to eject the schoolgirl from her house if she told anyone of the sexual abuse.

The terrified schoolgirl left with no protection from assault by her supposedly responsible guardians endured further abuse from the pair of males in the house until the time that she was seriously harmed presenting urinary and faecal incontinence with a diagnosis of Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) attributed to serial sexual rape allegedly perpetrated by both men, for which Ochanya was hospitalised for two months until her untimely death.

They let him go

It leaves one baffled given the medical history of Ochanya that the Medical Centre in Makurdi would ineptly conclude that Ochanya died of natural causes and the Police Forensic Laboratory reached another conclusion that she died of diseases that were related to sexual abuse.

It is unfortunate that Justice Augustine Ityonyiman of the Benue State High Court decided to err on the side of caution, questioning the preponderance of evidence, including video evidence of the deceased narrating her ordeal, even as the prosecution bungled the criminal case that he acquitted Andrew Ogbuja of raping and causing the death of Ochanya Ogbanje.

They got her here

At the Federal High Court in Makurdi, Felicia Ogbuja, the aunt faced another charge of negligence leading to the rape and the death of Miss Ochanya Ogbanje, brought by The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) before Justice Mobolaji Olajuwon.

The case was made that Felicia had knowledge of the fact that Ochanya was being sexually abused by her husband and her son, after first being informed by her daughter Winifred and then went on to threaten Ochanya with eviction if the girl mentioned her ordeal to anyone, after which she impeded and obstructed NAPTIP from gathering information from her daughter after the cause of Ochanya’s ailment was determined when admitted in the hospital.

Her omission to perform

As a consequence, Felicia neither challenged nor controverted the presented evidence, she was left culpable and if not an accessory to child sexual rape that consequently resulted in the death of a ward under the care of her family. Hence, she was found guilty as charged contrary to Section 314 of the Criminal Code Act in Nigeria.

When the cause of death is an omission to observe or perform a duty, the period is reckoned inclusive of the day on which the omission ceased.

When the cause of death is in part an unlawful act, and in part an omission to observe or perform a duty, the period is reckoned inclusive of the day on which the last unlawful act was done or the day on which the omission ceased, whichever is the later. https://jurist.ng/criminal_code_act/sec-314

The subsections shown above, indicate the death of Miss Ochanya Ogbanje was caused in part by the unlawful act of sexual assault allegedly perpetrated by both her uncle and her cousin, for which no one has yet been held duly accountable. Her death was also caused in part by the omission to observe when informed by her daughter that her ward was being abused by both her husband and her son and her decision not to perform a duty of care and protection on her ward once Felicia came into the knowledge of the child sexual abuse.

Negligence is a crime

Knowing she had another girl in the home, her own daughter, one would have expected her to offer a modicum of motherly protection to the girl living in her family home, to whom she might not have been a blood relation, but had a pertinent relationship with the responsibility and authority to do something, but she exacerbated the harm, for which there had to be consequence and NAPTIP should be commended for pursuing the case to a conclusion, viewing the victim as trafficked for sexual purposes, since the responsible adults did not intervene.

Child sexual abuse is too much a taboo subject in Nigeria, too many of us bear scars of child sexual abuse not pursued to fully prosecute perpetrators and obtain justice for the victims. Sadly, responsible adults in the environment where it occurs, rather than address the matter would opt for a cover-up giving license to predators to continue their abuse of minors.

Whilst this case of Ochanya Ogbanje might seem a miscarriage of justice as the alleged perpetrators have not been held accountable for sexual abuse and her consequent death, the other adult who turned a blind eye to the abuse and allowed it to continue with the victim so totally terrified of the threat of eviction means we cannot be bystanders in the knowledge of child sexual abuse, regardless of who is involved, and in this case, it was her husband and her son that she tried to protect from being held accountable of their criminality, and in doing so, she committed a crime of negligence to her duty of care leading to the death of a child in her care.

What good conduct?

I am so annoyed that people came to testify to the good conduct of Felicia Ogbuja, for what good conduct is there when you know a child is being sexually abused under your roof and you threaten the child rather than challenge your husband and your son? What leniency should be afforded to someone who prevented investigators from ascertaining the truth of the ordeal of Ochanya as first indicated to her by her own daughter before she moved to silence Ochanya?

That the witnesses would testify that Felicia Ogbuja had no record of previous convictions is beyond the pale, for child endangerment should never be mitigated on no previous offences, it is the ultimate duty of responsibility in which she totally failed, resulting in death, under her care. Does she have to be given another opportunity to let a child be abused by her husband and her son?

We need to dispense with the fallacy of Christianity as a mitigating factor of good conduct, much less, the membership of church societies says nothing about integrity, honour, responsibility, or character. Felicia Ogbuja was by all terms just as manifestly evil to Ochanya Ogbanje as her husband and her son, the judge saw through that and determined a custodial sentence was the least she could do.

Some justice for Ochanya

The judge did right in sentencing her to five months imprisonment without the option of a fine, if it is appealed, I would hope any other court would give more consideration to the victim, for her negligence resulted in the death of an innocent child. I do not care for the ornate marble grave that adorns the place of her internment. Ochanya Ogbanje as a child should have reasonably expected the care and the protection of the Ogbujas, but they preyed on her and wasted her with the violation of her person, her personhood, her body, her dignity, her childhood, and her life; for that, there can be no mitigation, it is unforgivable.

If Andrew Ogbuja cannot be retried, he should never be allowed to work with minors as a precautionary safeguarding measure, because he is a sexual predator as witnessed by his daughter.

Whenever Victor Ogbuja is apprehended, I hope he faces the full wrath of the law with no leniency. To Winifred Ogbuja who might just be the only redeeming feature of this family, I hope you find a bigger voice to prevent injustice when witnessed, regardless of who is involved.

There is no doubt that your father, your mother, and your brother set the worst examples anyone could view in a family unit. May good fortune find you, for you did what you could to save Ochanya Ogbanje, even if it was not enough.

Thought Picnic: The thoughts of a child rescued from a gorilla

The talk is much

Much commentary has been made about the episode where a toddler ended up in the gorilla enclosure of a Cincinnati zoo.

When I first commented on the matter, I put the blame squarely on the parents and in some ways I have not been too persuaded to excuse the matter. As far as I was concerned, a child in the care of an adult in a public place, that adult being the mother and by some happenstance, the child became a rag doll in the hands of a beast dragged twice through the gorilla’s play pool.

After what transpired, there is no doubt that the gorilla had to be shot for the protection of the child and that should end the matter.

Parents are generally good

However, the wringing of the hands of some parents who suddenly feel hard done by, by reason of the view that certain parents can be careless, negligent or even worse at standing up to their core responsibility of being parents will not wash with me.

Now, parents can be generally loving, genuinely concerned, rarely negligent, sometimes understanding, committedly responsible and suffocatingly protective, they deserve credit and gratitude for their parenting.

From the eye-line of the child

Yet, let us view things from the perspective of a child for one moment, the child is safe, but what are the consequences of that event on the long-term health and wellbeing of the child.

I was barely over 5 years old when an altercation between my parents led my father to leave the house and get into his car to drive away, my mother ran out as my uncle attempted to hold her back. There before me, the car tyre rode over my mother’s shin and to this day some 45 years after, that event still plays back like a film in my mind.

The abuse of trust

At 7, someone my parents were guardians for, took me into the toilet and sexually assaulted me, that was the day I lost my innocence. Though nothing happened between us after that, we had other man-servants who until I was 10 years old took sexual favours off me as if by entitlement. These were people to whom my parents had entrusted our care and they abused that trust.

When I left home for the first time to attend secondary school entrance exams, an older distant cousin took advantage of me, the matter vivid as can be. Meanwhile, having been away from home, the man-servant moved on to someone else. Nothing was revealed to my parents until I returned and I was informed by the abused that something had been done. My parents were informed, yet, no other questions were asked of others whether any one of their wards had been tampered with.

Long term effects

No, I do not think my parents were negligent, but the singular episodes that might have left them distraught cannot compensate for the lasting damage done to the child after abuse and without therapy. The scars remain even if the wounds have healed.

So, before parents genuflect with self-pity and defensiveness, they are not the only ones affected, the children, many of whom clam up and withdraw into themselves as a self-preservative measure, are just as affected and quite deeply too.

Many children never gain the voice to say what they have experienced or what they are going through, from abuse, through harm to depression and worse. Sometimes, there is no atmosphere that engenders the necessary communication the child needs to have. Parents take out their exasperation and frustration in an aggressive and accusative way that the problem is compounded and the child then gets labelled the problem.

This is the plight of many children and most will never get the help they need, the few of us who come into adulthood fortunate enough to have survived our many ordeals are yet to tell our stories to anyone will and able to listen.

What is safe?

There is much to write about the voice of children unheard, their fears unseen, their lives invisibly terrorised and their pleas ignored, much of which, I am afraid, parents have to answer for, despite that fact that they are trying their best. For a fact, parenting does not come with a manual, but it carries great lifelong responsibility. How a child turns out is a product of the presence or absence of that relationship.

And so I ended with the thought, whilst the child is safe now, you wonder if the child is really safe or what happened at the zoo was indicative of a deeper problem that an unfortunate accident.

The police are on the case: Police investigate parents of boy rescued from gorilla. [Fox News]

Nigeria: Surgeon in Stella Obasanjo Death Jailed

News from Spain

It was almost 4 years ago in my hotel room in Antwerp that I heard of a plane crash in Nigeria, and as the pundits speculated and postulated about what might have happened, additional sad news [1] came on air announcing the death of the wife of the President, Mrs Stella Obasanjo.

What made the news a bit suspicious was that she died in Spain; that was quite unusual for a Nigerian seeking medical treatment to end up in Spain when Germany and the United Kingdom were the usual luxury health locations.

A quick Google search for Marbella and surgery turned up an interesting development: the dear lady was in Spain for cosmetic surgery, which supposedly was to showcase herself as perfect for her 60^th birthday in a few weeks.

The dangers are real

Cosmetic surgery, however, has its dangers [2], much as programmes as Dr. 90210 almost trivialise the procedures that people seem to walk in and out of the clinics as if they have gone for a facial and manicure, these procedures are intrusive and just as critically risky as serious medical operations.

One does sometimes wonder if there is enough duty of care, monitoring and professionalism in the cosmetic surgery business for beauty rather than serious medical need.

The case of Mrs Obasanjo seems to have highlighted that issue where the surgeon has now been jailed [3] for carelessness and neglect, struck off for three years and ordered to pay $176,000 to Mrs Obasanjo’s son.

This,  however, cannot be any consolation for the loss and, worse still, for what agony and excruciating pain she might have suffered as the surgeon failed to appreciate the urgency of her condition until it was too late.

Negligence in a foreign land

She had undergone a liposuction procedure, which left the tube puncturing her colon and lacerating her liver. The doctor was not on call for hours as her state deteriorated, and when he finally became available, she was rushed to the hospital in his car rather than in an ambulance.

It is likely that Mrs Obasanjo might have visited Spain secretly for this procedure and therefore did not have at her beck and call all the due courtesies that might have accompanied such an important personality; being in a strange place with careless surgeons administering intrusive treatments must be scary enough for anyone.

In the end, the lessons are clear that seeking medical treatment abroad is not enough if proper attention is not paid to the quality of care expected for paying for such a service, that cosmetic surgery is no trivial matter, and that foreign doctors can expect to be nabbed by the long arms of the law where their professionalism is questionable.

The question remains whether that procedure was really necessary at all.

Sources

[1] Giving news a picture [akin.blog-city.com]

[2] Cosmetic surgery poses dangers [akin.blog-city.com]

[3] BBC NEWS | Europe | Doctor jailed for Obasanjo death