It is the hardest thing I have had to deal with in my life and I don’t wish this on any other parent. I would say to any parent not to trust anyone to always protect their children,” she said in a definitive tone.
“Sometimes I don’t want to think about it, but it is with me all the time, every night before I go to bed it comes back to me,” she continued.
This mother of one is constantly tormented by the fact that her nine-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by a relative. She blames herself for allowing the child to spend a weekend at a relative, for her that was shirking her responsibility a mother and deems it a mistake she does not plan to make again.
“I will never allow my daughter to sleep out again, she will be with me. I can’t trust anyone because it is not a stranger who did it to her it was someone she know. He is married into the family,” she lamented.
The mother shared her daughter’s plight on Facebook but used a pseudonym to protect the child’s identity. I contacted her through a number that was left at the bottom of the post. I had to be vetted before the person on the other end gave me the number for the mom, since the number left in the post did not belong to her.
“It is hard to talk about and every time I talk about it, I does break down because I can’t imagine this happen to my child,” she told me when I contacted her.
She asked that I use what she wrote in the post to share what happened to the child as she was not in a state of mind to go into the graphic details.
I asked if she wanted to talk about her feelings.
“Right now, that and all I can’t talk about. It is total devastation. I try to focus but sometimes I can’t work. It is tough but I have to try because I cannot take any more time off from work,” she answered.
“The only good thing about all of this is that my daughter talk as soon as she come back. She tell her grandmother and she did not hesitate to report it. My daughter is a bubbly person and I would always talk to her.”
She said that while the police acted swiftly and arrested the man, he was later released on bail. She is now questioning why after two months the man cannot be charged and placed before the courts.
“I don’t want justice, I need justice. My daughter wants to know what is happening and I want somebody to say why this man has not been charged yet,” she pleaded.
As she recounted on the Facebook post, the child had gone with other children in the company of the male relative to swim. The man offered to teach the child to swim and he did so away from the other children, and it was during that period that he assaulted the child in the water. According to the mother, the child said she told him to stop, begged him to stop but he continued even as she cried.
Afterwards, he purchased ice cream and chocolate for the child, but she refused them. She did not relate to the man’s wife what transpired but waited until she returned to her grandmother’s home.
“As soon as she got back, they knew something was wrong with her because she was not her usual self and her aunt started to question her. She started to cry, and her aunt called her grandmother and is then she told them what happened. Right away the grandmother reported the matter and called me.”
She wrote that that she felt like dying when she heard her daughter recount the terrifying incident. And when she was taken to the doctor to be examined the mother said she broke down in tears when the doctor confirmed that her baby was sexually assaulted.
The child has gone through a forensic interview and she is being counselled weekly, but the mother wants the matter to reach to the court and she pleaded for help in the Facebook post.
She told me she has plans to visit the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions as she wants to know why the matter is being dragged out.
This has been a complaint of many rape survivors. Even the law has been changed to allow paper committal, a process that saves the victim from testifying in the lower court as instead the magistrate determines a prima facie case from the statements, it is a lengthy period before the cases get to the court.
Even Director of the Child Care and Protection Agency Ann Greene had lamented this fact in the past, but she did say that the police have to investigate the matter. Some have complained that arresting the accused and placing them on station bail give some of them an opportunity to skip town.
“My daughter is asking questions and I just want this matter to go to court,” the woman once again said.
“It affects me, but I can’t allow to get it me down because when she see me down, she would start crying and I don’t want that,” she added.
“Right now, I would just like to warn and advise all parents to protect their children and not allow them to sleep out. Always look out for your children, whether boy or girl, you cannot be too careful,” the sister said.
I am happy that the child is being counselled and the mother said she would ensure that it is a long-term process. She pledged that she would continue to fight for justice for her only child and would use her experience to warn others wherever she can.
I hope that the accused is charged and placed before the court soon and that the child continues to be counselled.
