Death for watching TV!

IT is really difficult to fathom how the minds of some people work. They exhibit plain selfishness and wickedness, as if it is not blood that flows through their veins. How can a woman said to be a mother of four beat her housemaid to death just because she was watching television with her children? The fact that she is a mother makes the matter even much more ironic, astonishing and confounding. The woman allegedly tortured the 10-year-old maid so much that her screams drew the attention of neighbours who intervened to stop the torture and caused the hapless maid to be rushed to hospital. But unfortunately, it was a little too late: the callously battered girl died before she could be given medical intervention. She reportedly passed on even before getting to hospital!

In other words, the woman murdered her in cold blood because she had the effrontery to sit with her children to watch television! And sadly, this horrible incident made the news perhaps only because the girl died. If she hadn’t died, she probably would have had to live with the trauma of the savagery visited on her by a patently wicked and irresponsible adult. This woman has four children. If that was the way she chastised her own children when they did wrong, would they still be alive? Or her children didn’t do any wrong? It was a pathetic, selfish and hypocritical case of a dog knowing how to treat her puppies with love and tenderness but being adept at dealing fatal blows to those of the grass cutter. Even at that, while the beasts could be excused on account of the natural and standard order of the food chain, nothing can explain away bestial acts among humans. The woman’s act was the height of wickedness and it is diametrically unacceptable.

The Owerri-based woman has no right to treat anyone, including her enemies, the way she treated the girl. You cannot take the law into your own hands whether or not you are reasonably aggrieved. Besides, the unwarranted decimation of an innocent girl occurred in circumstances that smacked of oppression and callousness and were totally bereft of any justification. Perhaps the woman had got away with vicious assaults and batteries on innocent persons in the past because they didn’t culminate in the death of the her victims, otherwise, she would not have been so hard on an impressionable girl in such a way as to snuff out her life, even though that may not have been her motive. We warn that impunity plays a huge role in the repetition of aberrant behaviour, and so it must not be allowed to rear its ugly head in this case, and the only way to ensure that is for all the culprits in this case to be sanctioned according to the law.

To be sure, this woman has not just murdered the young girl, which is a grievous offence, she also had no right to hire the girl as a maid in the first place. It is another serious offence. And without taking away anything from the maxim that ignorance of the law is not an excuse, it is imperative to stress that it is child abuse for a 10-year-old to be used as a housemaid. This is a gross violation of the Child Rights Act. The girl is too young to be a maid. Both the parents and the employer violated the law and should be held accountable. It is even insane to send one’s young children into slavery in the name of poverty.

The girl was callously robbed of her childhood and denied parental love and affection. In a sense, her parents made a bad decision by stampeding her into adulthood even as they ended up throwing her into a toxic and cruel environment where she was treated like a worthless person. And why kill a maid because she watched TV? Is she subhuman? How would a 10-year-old girl have known that she had breached the house rule that forbade non-members, as it were, to watch television? By watching television with the children of this wicked woman, who most probably enjoyed her company, can any decent mind say an egregious offence warranting death or vicious attack had been committed? And assuming but not conceding that the deceased committed ‘an offence’ by coming from a poor background and exuberantly mingling with the children of her affluent boss, is death the punishment for such an ‘offence’? And is the woman at liberty to mete out her own version of justice whenever she felt aggrieved, without any regard for the extant laws of the land? The law must not permit a reckless and unrestrained woman and her ilk to continue having a field day at the expense of innocent citizens. The law should view her dastardly act very seriously.

It is difficult to not blame the government over the continued occurrences of this kind of aberration in the society which laws are already in place to checkmate. Ultimately, the government has a duty to ensure that the laws of the land are complied with at all times. It is, therefore, not out of place to surmise that incidents like this are a reflection of the sub-optimal functioning of government and governance. Rules and laws are mostly observed in the breach. Imagine parents and guardians sending young children into slavery and serfdom in the name of earning income as home helps, where they are inhumanly treated and often lose their lives, all against the provisions of the Child Rights Act. The government has a responsibility to up its notion of governance and ensure that rules are scrupulously maintained, with those who are in the breach made to face the full wrath of the law. The suspect in the instant case should be investigated, prosecuted and punished if found guilty. This is a high crime and the matter is strictly between her and the state.

We urge civil society organisations to show keen interest in the case. The question of settling out of court by way of payment of compensation to the young girl’s parents should not arise for two reasons. One, if the suspect gets away with this alleged crime, it will send a wrong signal to her ilk. And in any case, no amount of compensation would restore the life of the hapless girl. Again, her parents should not be allowed to benefit from the deliberate error they committed by sending her to go and earn income for them under a slavish condition which ultimately resulted in her untimely death. That would bad justice because they are actually supposed to be penalised for breaching the Child Rights Act. This is a clear case of murder and should be so treated. And that should be in addition to applying the appropriate punishment in the sanction grid for the breach of the Act by both the parents of the girl and her unconscionable and callous employer. Put more pointedly, the innocent girl whose life was cut short had rights under the law that should have been officially protected, notwithstanding that her parents and employer are unfeeling and irresponsible adults.

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