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| From left Christopher and Blessing right the victim. |
An eight-year-old girl has narrated how
she was allegedly raped by their 48-year-old neighbour, Mr. Peter
Christopher, one afternoon
in the building her family shared with
another tenant.
The girl, Blessing (not real name), explained to Saturday PUNCH
that on Thursday, June 18, 2015, she was about to enter her parent’s
apartment when, Christopher, a carpenter, whose lives just two doors
away from their apartment, dragged her into his room, locked the door
and defiled her.
Saturday PUNCH had been
informed about the girl’s case by a human rights activist, who felt
concerned about the pressure being put on the her family to drop the
case. But when our correspondent tracked down the girl’s family, they
were reluctant to share the story as they said they did not want to be
seen as “being disobedient to pastors and elders who asked us to leave
the matter to God.”
Blessing
was a jovial girl, she smiled a lot. But when it was time to tell the
story of what she went through. Her face creased into a frown as tears
streamed down her face.
Her elder sister urged her on to tell everything that happened.
Blessing said, “His (Christopher’s) wife had gone for a wedding programme that day. He was alone in the house.
“I was playing outside before but as I
came in and was about to open our door, he moved near me and dragged me
by hand into their room.
“He locked the door and pulled down my panties. He then put his ‘thing’ inside me. That was the only time he did it.”
Blessing’s mother explained how she found out able the defilement of her daughter.
She said, “I did not know anything until
the night when she told me that her private part was hurting her. I did
not suspect anything and she did not tell me anything.
“I rubbed Vaseline on her to ease the
pain but the following day when I wanted to bathe her, I realised that
she was bleeding. I then suspected that somebody had been touching my
daughter.
“As soon as I asked who had been touching her, she told me that it was our neighbour. He is even older than my husband!”
Christopher has a daughter of his own, who is in the same age group as Blessing.
He was arrested and detained at the Agbado Police Division, while the girl was taken for test and treatment.
While Christopher was in detention, he
continued to deny that he ever touched the girl. But Blessing said he
had no reason to lie while her parents said they believed their
daughter.
However, after the pressure of numerous
pleas from pastors and landlords in the area became too much, the girl’s
parents were forced to write a letter to withdraw their case.
In order to douse the tension generated
on the case, their landlady also signed an undertaken on Christopher’s
behalf, and agreed to pay the sum of N25,000 in five instalments to
Blessing’s parents.
“I just don’t know what that money is
for because I have refused to take it. Is it for my daughter’s treatment
or compensation? If it is for treatment, what I spent on her treatment,
tests and drugs is even more than that,” the girl’s 41-year-old father
said.
Our correspondent went in search of
Christopher on Wednesday to get his side of the story. The fair
complexioned man courteously offered our correspondent a chair but his
attitude changed instantly when asked if he indeed raped the girl.
He demanded to know who notified our
correspondent about the case. But when asked how that affected the
allegations brought against, he refused to say anything further.
“If you cannot tell me the name of the person who made the allegations against me, I cannot say anything further,” he said.
Source: Punch Newspaper
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