Ibadan women talk tough on rape, domestic violence

Last week  Sunday, many people across the world, especially women, celebrated the International Women’s Day, with the theme: ‘I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights.’ According to the United Nations (UN), the theme is aligned with the UN Women’s new multigenerational campaign, Generation Equality, which marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive roadmap for the empowerment of women and girls, everywhere.

On the other hand, the emerging global consensus is that despite some progress, real change has been agonizingly slow for the majority of women and girls in the world. Women and girls continue to be undervalued and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces.

“Today, not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality,” the UN noted. “The year 2020 represents an unmissable opportunity to mobilise global action to achieve gender equality and human rights of all women and girls.”

In Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, some women’s advocates under the auspices of Women Safe House Sustenance Initiative (a non-governmental organisation that is dedicated to fighting gender-based violence and rehabilitation of rape victims) and Savingcross Justicepoint Foundation (a foundation that caters for indigent citizens, mostly prison inmates) organised a community awareness event on rape and domestic violence to ignite safe communities to protect women victims of violence and to aid their recovery.

The event, which held in a Redeem church along Forestry Road on Jericho Hill, was attended by not only the church members, but also by other people including experts on women, gender, and domestic violence. After ‘Mask’, a film on rape, was played, the experts, one after the other, mounted the stage and educated the audience on rape and domestic violence, and their consequences to the individual, family and society.

The first speaker to mount the stage was Adenike Oyarekua, who is a lawyer and a volunteer with Savingcross Justicepoint Foundation. She spoke about the negative ways people perceive or regard rape victims in the society. She lamented the demeaning and judgemental ways they are treated, which would end up aggravating their plights.

“There is nothing more hurtful than when someone tells you he or she has been raped and you are start asking questions like: ‘Are you sure it’s not your fault?’, ‘What were you wearing?’, ‘What were you doing in a boy’s house?’,” she said. “When they come to you, let them speak. Don’t judge them. You can take them to the police station or to the hospital where they can be tested.”

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Oyarekua encouraged the public to change their disposition towards thing that has to do with sexual abuse and violence, noting that the problem with rape victims not speaking up is because of the fear of stigmatisation.

“Stigmatisation is one of the things rape perpetrators rely on because they know their victims will not speak up,” she lamented. “If the perpetrator does it to the first, second and third persons, and nobody holds him accountable, he’ll do it again.”

The second speaker was Omowumi Okedare, a volunteer at Women Safe House and a doctoral student of public health of the University of Ibadan, with research interest in intimate partner violence among young women. She noted that rape is any sex without consent, when the other partner does not consent to it.

“If she turns away, no consent; she says no, no consent; she says yes, all of a sudden she says no, no consent; she stops and says no, no consent; she is quiet, no consent,” she said. “Consent is vital for either partners or spouses.”

Okedare noted that statistics shows that one in every four girls, before the age of eighteen is raped, and that most of these rapes occur in the homes of the victims by know persons—either by the father, current or former partners, neighbours or housekeepers. She added that rape by strangers is less, and that a lot of rape cases, like 95 – 97 per cent, go unreported, because the victims are afraid or ashamed to speak up.

She further noted that one of the risk factors of being raped or being a rapist is previous experience, that for someone that has raped before or has been raped before, the changes are high that the person would be raped again or would rape again. She spoke on the consequences of rape, which include blaming the victim, psychological and mental problems, sexual dysfunction, among others.

“We should stop discrimination and stigmatisation of rape victims. Whether the rape happened in the past or in recent, we should believe them.” she said.” Let’s break the code of silence on rape. If you keep quiet and condone it, you’re giving power to the perpetrators.”

She frowned on the fact that most rape and domestic violence awareness programmes are centred on girls and women than on boys and men. “Now we’re canvassing and saying let’s start with the boys as well. And it starts from the home. If the home is faulty, the society will be faulty as well.”

The third speaker was Leye Oginni, a volunteer at Women Safe House. Oginni spoke mostly on marital rape. She stressed that nobody prays to be raped, but it could happen to anyone if they do not act or speak up.

Making reference to the movie ‘Mask’, where one of the women rape victims did not speak up because she wanted to keep her home, Oginni noted that it is good to keep our homes, that we need our homes, but not to our own detriments.

“Every group starts from home, and women are the home builders,” she said. “However, being the home builders don’t mean we should do it to the detriment of our future, life, children and health. So, we need to balance it all.”

Oginni admonished spouses, especially women, to let their partners know when they do not need sex, stressing that the wrong mentality that the man is the owner of his wife’s body should be erased.

“Sometime, the man will say ‘I’ve paid her bride price,’, ‘It’s my duty,’ ‘I’ve every right to her body any time, any day, any moment’,” she lamented. “You’ve the right to your body as a woman. You can say no to sex in clear terms if you don’t want it. And your spouse should go through it with you, fashioning out ways to go about it with you.”

Like the first speaker, she stressed that the girls should not be the only people to be talked to or trained about rape and domestic violence, that boys and men need to be educated too.

“Boys and men should be discouraged from raping their girls and women,” she stressed. “When your woman says no, let it be no. when her actions say no, let it be no.”

The last speaker was Wuraoluwa Ayodele Sobi, a lawyer and the founder of Women Safe House. She noted that even though today was International Women’s Day, domestic violence could be perpetrated by both men and woman. She stressed domestic violence is a crime, not minding the forms it takes.

“It can be emotional, causing your partner to think less of you. It can be economical, causing your partner to deny you money to get what you need just to teach you a lesson, she said. “I can also be sexual, causing your partner to have sex with you whether you like it not. It can be physical, causing your partner slap, beat or pure harmful substances on you.”

Sobi encouraged anyone that is going experiencing domestic violence or that knows anyone that experiencing it to speak or report it. She discouraged people from saying it is not their business, that it is not happening in their home, that they are minding their business.

“Please, it’s your business. Domestic violence is not a domestic issue. We should be concerned about one another,” she said. “That’s why we’re here today for this awareness. The truth is while it’s happening outside, it’s happening in the church. And, yet, some people don’t want to talk about it.”

She stressed that if one in every four girls are sexual abused and there is no space to cater for them and ensure they have rehabilitation, those same girls would end up being the wives and our neighbours.

“A lot of people have been sexually molested and nobody will know,” she lamented. “So, our job is in two major folds: prevention and rehabilitation. The prevention stage is what we’re doing today. We must not stop until domestic violence stops.”

Some men in the audience also lend their voices to the issues. Dr Segun Arogundade, the head of medical team of Women Safe House, debunked the myth that rape or the propensity for rape has medical origin, that it is rather the environment people grow up or find themselves in that counts most.

“If you’re a parent of young children, you should watch and monitor them, and the things they do,” he said. “This’s one way we can avoid this.”

A man in the audience, who was not too comfortable with what the pastor said about not being too spiritual about issues of rape and domestic violence, stressed the need to be spiritual about them.

“Most of these things happen because of ignorance,” he said. “Most of these rapes and violence start from watching pornography.”

From the foregoing, according to the UN, International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women, who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.

“Women earn 23 per cent less than men globally and occupy only 24 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide,” UN noted. “1 in 3 experiences physical or sexual violence and 200 million girls-women have suffered genital mutilation. Let’s make 2020 count for women and girls everywhere.”

In line with this UN admonition, the founder of Savingcross Justicepoint Foundation and co-convener of the event, Oluwaseun Folajumon-Banjo, who is also a lawyer, noted that once women are safe, the society is safe. She encouraged the audience to take this message to their homes, communities and beyond.