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.

The Big Short on my life and those of others

The patterns I see

When it comes to financial matters, I have always said my father is a brilliant accountant, but it did not come down through the genes. Successful as he was in his profession which he still practices on behalf of the Anglican diocese in which he resides, only one of my siblings took a career path that had any financial component.

However, I somehow have an affinity for noticing patterns, things that align and things that seem to be out of place, unfortunately, I have never exploited that knowledge to the full as over time I have watched things that were once an inkling become an industry where if I had been more driven by my deepest premonitions, I would have been one of the pioneers. No regrets.

In March 2000, I travelled to Munich for an interview with the now defunct Compaq Inc., I decided to spend a week there and during my visit I met with a futures trader who was heavily leveraged in dot.com stocks. My reading of the situation then was things were about to collapse, simply because I noticed a pattern.

My advice to him was to reduce his exposure, he looked at me with incredulity, within weeks the dot.com bubble burst and the rest is history.

As it touched me

I have a more personal story about how I was affected by the markets, just less than a decade later. I bought my apartment in Amsterdam 2001, having given my estate agent 6 weeks to complete the deal to pick up my keys on the 1^st of November 2001.

It was a 105m², 7th-floor apartment with large windows overlooking two old Amsterdam harbours, a wonderful place by any standards. My mortgage was at inception the same as paid for rent in another part of Amsterdam for about 18 months.

The trajectory as it then was, whilst the housing market seemed overheated, the interest rates were going down, and this happened progressively every two years until about 45% was shaved off my mortgage in 6 years.

That other marker

Meanwhile, there was an underlying current that should have sent alarm bells ringing that I ignored until it was too late. My mortgage was undergirded by a life insurance policy that I paid a hefty sum to every year and in the mortgage term of 25 years, it was supposed to have accumulated enough to pay off my mortgage.

Each year, accounting for administration costs and much else, nothing was being compounded into the policy, rather, I was seeing less of what I put in that I had to ask for a review of the conditions of my mortgage to ensure I had not been defrauded.

Everyone who had worked on my mortgage had already walked away with their commissions as the signs of a financial crisis appeared on the horizon with the sub-prime mortgage defaults in the United States.

The tsunami I could not outrun

I could not ignore what was happening, yet I felt like there was an earthquake somewhere far away and the water was receding from the beach in anticipation of a tsunami I could not escape, it was scary.

As so I wrote in August 2007:

Blog - Dishonest lending clue to market tremors

Then casually in October 2007:

Blog - Local situations in global straits

The tsunami had already come in and swept me away from my apparent comfort zone, a revision of my biennial fixed term mortgage saw a rise of 50 basis points, some consequent outgoings of about €550 a month in addition to what I was already paying.

No particular fault of ours, only the banks shoring up their books having messed up and gotten bailed out, with none of the people in charge of this debacle going to jail for anything, if any even got to be questioned for their atrocity.

Swept away

By then, it had become a case of Fixing Capitalist Errors with Socialist Favours which I wrote in December 2007.

Within two years of that, I was diagnosed with cancer, got treated, recovered, but the markets had dealt a blow to our livelihoods, the job markets also began to introduce unfavourable filters to eliminate foreigners from consideration where we once freely had access.

In the end, I sold my apartment at a loss after 10 and a half wonderful years, though barely covered by the insurance and eventually returned home to the UK to rebuild my life.

The Big Short

Earlier today, I went to watch The Big Short which is described as a biographical comedy-drama, and whilst I will agree it is biographical and it is a drama, it was no comedy when we look at the disaster it caused in millions of lives whilst those who found out what was wrong with the system walked away laughing to the bank.

At worst, the banks have been fined billions by the regulatory bodies, but there have been no major indictments, the legislative framework that was to help avoid a similar collapse of the banking system has been watered down and the banks have more or less returned to their brand of casino banking with new banksters slinging guns of dubious provenance as products of the highest quality.

We’re back on that merry-go-round of atrocity for which the generality of the populace has been made to pay dearly for in austerity and worse, whilst the politicians and the banks waltz away in illicit copulation.

Yet, in understanding this rotten and corrupt enterprise a bit more, history is probably going to repeat itself worse than before and the criminals will once again walk free.

Woe betide them.

Thought Picnic: Warding off depression

Not right, no write

In a way, my blog has suffered in this year in many ways that I sometimes do not want to acknowledge. However, I cannot fail to notice that I have hardly written in 10 weeks of this year what I would normally have written in a month.

Yet, it is not for the lack of things to write about, there seems to be a preoccupation with other things and unsettling distractions that divert focus from the essential and the important. I have become a sort of hermit, in a recluse and creating a kind of isolated existence that is broken only when I have to attend appointments.

Typically bussed

One such open appointment was a visit to the hospital yesterday just for a phlebotomy, I would normally have called an Uber ride to the hospital, but a price surge early in the afternoon when I had just received an email about a 14% price cut across the board on all fares left me feeling I did not want to be unnecessarily fleeced.

Many times, I had seen the bus to the hospital on diversion past my apartment block, but the roadworks had finished, I needed to find where to board the bus. On my way to the bus stop, I saw two buses go by, the same number, different routes – just the kind of confusion you need.

On getting to the bus stop that both the double-decker and single-decker bus would ply, the timetable indicated 10 minutes between buses, but the next bus did not arrive for another 18 minutes.

The bus driver had no change for a £20 note and motioned to me to take a seat, giving me a free ride to the hospital.

Pricks and drips

On getting to the blood room as it is called, there was only one other patient waiting, I thought they had closed for the day and it was not yet 2:00 PM. The room at other times usually has over 10 patients waiting as I started a conversation with the lady.

Soon she was called in and then I was where on giving her date of birth, there was no way any of us could believe she was 65. This session only required one vial of blood as opposed to the 9 I had to give just over a month ago.

We were done in minutes and as I stepped out of the hospital, I saw a bus that could take me back into town, only that again, this bus driver on a different bus did not have change either. This meant going to the hospital café to get a drink and with that some change with which I was then still able to catch the same bus and I was soon back at home.

Many other plans are tentative, nothing fixed and not much else followed through, the day passes slowly and almost uneventful, the need for determination, purpose and focus is clear or maybe I am just depressed.

Thought Picnic: Looking ahead

Blessed

Each waking day is a blessing, the way I see things differs from the way I once saw things. That dividing line sits at the point when the reality of my situation was quantified as having just 5 weeks left to live after a cancer diagnosis.

In other blogs, I have written about the choices I had and the advice I was given, in that if I did not respond well to the treatment being offered, I probably had no other options but one of slipping away. I survived and have counted over six years since I heard that news.

Yet, I struggle within myself about what lies ahead of me, it is a difficult battle, a mind in flux seeking a calmness and sense of ease whilst aware that things are not what they used to be.

Unhappy

At my last medical consultation which was almost a month ago, I was both unhappy and dissatisfied, I normally write about these visits, but I let this pass.

In the space of 4 years, my medical file has seen 4 hospitals and for all the appointments I have had since returning to the UK, apart from in Wales, I have not had the pleasure of seeing my assigned consultant on two visits in a row. In fact, I have seen everyone who works in the department and each conversation requires going over what I had done many times before.

For a condition that I have been promised will be tackled as soon as possible, and that was three years ago, I only finally got an appointment to commence treatment in a few weeks. I guess it came down to telling the consultant on my last visit that I am quite well aware of my mortality if they decide not to do anything soon.

Vulnerability

Now, I do not want to dice with death or have it daily occupy my thoughts, I love the things I do and would love to enjoy life more without having a medical sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

Then, the reality is, after cancer, life ahead has two perspectives, one of recognised vulnerability and the other of new opportunity, and you have to live both.

I have seen friends afflicted with fates much worse than mine and seen people go out to try new things as if they bathe in a pool of inexhaustible youth and pleasure. It becomes a quest that no matter how good the past was, better days should be ahead.

Living

I want to celebrate the joy of living, the happiness of laughter, the warmth of love and the experience of amazing wonder in people and in nature. Ahead in the uncertain is that one should live like the end is nigh and then live like the tomorrows will have no end.

What to expect from the next line of treatment is not clear, but I hope I have the fortitude and stoicism to face it even better than when I had chemotherapy coursing through my veins.

If I get to sigh, it is one that says, whilst we are living, let’s live and live well.

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

An observation

Walking up Boulevard de Strasbourg towards Gare de l’Est Station, I could not help but notice amongst the bijou restaurants and cafes along with the decrepit but expensive hotels that would hardly elicit a 2-star rating on any self-respecting booking site, the ethnic homogeneity of people and shops.

Whilst I would not venture the suggestion of African town as a corollary to Chinatown, most of the shops had something to do with hair, cosmetics and some fashion.

The barbers and there were a few, and much as I should resist the temptation to get into the Afro hair wars, an observation of this sort must not be left unattended to.

Changing the African

Now, the shops had all manner of paints and colours, makeup to make scary clowns of otherwise beautiful and comely people. The matter of hair extensions is another thing, not one lady of African ancestry appears to sport natural hair.

No braids, no plaits, rather, we all happen to have hair like Caucasians will have their hair, relaxed, long and falling over the shoulders, most black and at times melanin-deficient brown. It is not like I should have much to say about hair, from the moment I noticed male-pattern baldness, I have shaved my head rather than exercise myself over the loss of hair.

The unpretty angst

This is inexpensive for me, considering I shave it just when I have my regular shaves and the occasional scrapes that take fillets of skin off my scalp that the pain gives that unusual opportunity to shed a tear or two.

Beyond hair, the skin is toned and despite that tendency to scarring some have resorted to cosmetic surgery with varying results, and that is not to say of those who have paid the ultimate price enhancing their boobs, buttocks or looks. When are we going to feel secure and comfortable in our own skins?

It goes without saying that we have bought into a mindset that creates a fashion industry exploiting the predominant view that naturally, we are somewhat unpretty. Yet, we must all choose the look that makes us most confident about ourselves, even if it is not natural, that is one of the amazing things about the resourcefulness of our humanity. However, the greatest beauty will always be on the inside.

TLC – Take it away!

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

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.

Nigeria: President Buhari, get to work and honestly, shut up!

Just a few black sheep

In some tweets and probably some blogs I have railed about how certain Nigerians resort to criminal enterprise in Diaspora. It is sad that the activity of those Nigerians eventually has a deleterious effect on the lives of other Nigerians once a stereotype is created from the few events, usually borne of the reportage that follows.

For every few black sheep Nigerians involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, fraud, swindles, corruption and other crimes of reputational impact, there multitudes of Nigerians who as world citizens dispersed around the globe living decent, honest, valuable, amazing and commendable lives in their communities bringing pride and showing exemplary conduct.

Archaic at best, ignorant at worst

In a recent visit to the UK, President Muhammadu Buhari seems to have expressed opinions of an archaic, ill-informed and frankly ignorant nature about his fellow citizens abroad, having failed to qualify his statements and thereby unwittingly and unforgivably besmirched the reputation and integrity of the Nigerian majority in Diaspora.

There is no doubt that in his words, “We have an image problem abroad and we are on our way to salvage that.” But that is hardly the whole story. [The Telegraph]

He went on to say, “Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but they have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking, I don't think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home, where their services are required to rebuild the country.”

The potential never realised

We need to break this down, I have been in Europe a total of over 30 years, I was born in the UK, we returned to Nigeria after the civil war and the promise and ideal that was Nigeria for the decade of the 1970s became a rapid decline in the 1980s, a good few of us left Nigeria, disillusioned young men and women as the 1980s closed and we got into the 1990s and that with much reason.

Whilst things might not have been difficult for me in general, things were made difficult by a system that neither celebrated merit nor honesty, there was a rent-seeker down the chain of every attempt to do anything in the public and the private sector that expected a backhander, it was suffocating.

Others experienced worse, university courses stunted by incessant strikes, job opportunities going to those who could peddle the right sort of influence, people persecuted for being different, insurrection and militancy creating impossible living conditions and in the words of a friend that recently left Nigeria, “We keep hoping for the best for the nation but when the government does not think it criminal to owe its employees’ wages, the employees have to look for another means of surviving.”

This is ill-informed

The President seems either blinkered, myopic or indifferent to the plight of the Nigerian majority suffering at home to come over to the UK and pass unqualified and unfair judgement on Nigerians abroad, on the basis of the infractions and the criminal enterprise of a few.

Indeed, Nigeria can do with the services of amazingly resourceful, knowledgeable and expert fellow countrymen, but there must be an unbreakable contract in the provision of this service, the most important of this is paying promptly for the products and the services; extending to employee rights, the duty for employers in all sectors to pay salaries in full and on time, the prospect of career development, the right not to have to work in exacting conditions of abuse, disrespect and forms of bonded slavery.

People leaving school should know they have a possible work life in Nigeria that would exploit their potential to the fullest. The issue of infrastructure needs to be addressed with the engagement of Nigerian talent in roads and transportation, power, health, education and other areas of development.

That war on corruption must be prosecuted to the fullest extent and the looted funds ploughed back into the economy, the insurgencies and militancy need to be contained for the regions affected to see development and much else.

Get to work and honestly, shut up!

President Muhammadu Buhari has his work cut out, the greatest of which is restoring the promise that Nigeria once was at her independence and rewriting a contract of citizenship with Nigerians that shows we have a place and a stake in Nigeria. He is not going to get far with insinuation and vituperation masquerading as frank patrician talk to the foreign press, it is just bad form.

What comes into Nigeria from Diaspora is great and not to be belittled, yet, until the project that is Nigeria heads towards a greater prospect which is for his leadership to conduct and direct, the exodus from Nigeria will continue and for good reason, we all have one life to live and everyone wants to make the best of that life regardless of where that can be done, for some, it is outside Nigeria.