My son is a rapist!
I don’t believe I will ever get to live the day I will tell the world that I am the mother who gave birth to a son who I invested the better part of my life into and all I get as a reward is him getting caught for rape.
Jamiu is my first son.
He is the one I will say I am most close to of all my four children.
He is the one who saw my suffering. He saw the way his father brutalized me over every single mistake because he was always drunk. He was the one who would crawl beside me on the mattress we dropped on the floor to sleep and tell me not to worry, that he would soon grow up and take care of me.
Young as he was then, at age 8 years or thereabout, he would tell me I should stop crying and not let his father see how badly I hurt.
So you see, Jamiu was a son I put all my hopes in.
He was a child I told myself would take care of me in my old age.
You see, I have not been lucky growing up. I was sent as a house help to an aunty help in Lagos when I turned 9 years old. The aunty didn’t promise to send me to school, she wanted someone to look after her children in exchange for food and a place to live. My parents were too glad to send me to her, I was one mouth less for them to feed.
Ibro would come at odd times
My aunty’s husband, we called him Alhaji Lawal, he was also an Alfa, and he was versed in kewu, which is the Quran, he was a good man but he had a younger brother, Ibro who visited the house when Alhaji and his wife were not home. It was on one of those occasions he raped me I was 16 years old then.
I fought him, but he beat me and overpowered me.
When my bosses came back; Alhaji and his wife saw me crying, I told them, and they told me I shouldn’t worry they would give me money.
I didn’t want money. I was bruised all over. They told me to go and take my bath, gave me paracetamol, and gave me the rest of the day off house chores. I heard both of them quarreling about it. Aunty wanted Alhaji to report to the police but Alhaji said he couldn’t report his own flesh and blood to the police.
That month, they gave me money and they though they told me it would never happen again, I lived in constant fear in that house, especially every time Ibro came to visit and he acted as if nothing happened. At that time, he stopped coming to the house when his brother and his wife were out.
I spoke to my legs
One day, I waited for them to leave the house and I took their kids to a neighbour’s house. I told the woman I was running an errand. I packed all my stuff and ran away.
From there, I fell into the hands of one aunty again and she made me her slave at a canteen she owned. It was from there, I came to meet my husband. He told me he would take care of me so at age 19 0r 20, I am not sure, I ran away to live with him…I had a child the following year, that is Jamiu.
Life as a mother of four children with a husband who was always drunk and beat me was no life, so when Jamiu would crawl up to me on the mattress to beg me to stop crying, I believed in my heart that one day, he would take care of me.
But look at me today. Life has not been good to me.
Jamiu will never take care of me.
Jamiu is in jail because I put him there.
How did this happen?
With a husband who didn’t care about me or his children, I had to speak to myself to get help from people otherwise my children and I would starve. So there’s this Lady who invited me to help her cook. From there, I became a cook for offices…the money wasn’t much but it was constant and even if I couldn’t put a good roof over my children’s heads, I could at least provide them food and since they attended government schools, the little I earned helped to keep us going.
He passed his exams
Jamiu finished secondary school and made five papers. Jamb was difficult. He didn’t reach their cutoff mark, so he said he would repeat it the following year. But let’s be honest, where will the money for university come from?
But you know with these children, they talk as if they forget where they come from. He kept saying he would go to the university, in my mind, I am wondering, with what?
Where is the money for that?
I honestly wanted him to go learn a trade, and start making money but I mentioned it to this Lady and she told her husband. He told me to ask Jamiu to come and see him in his workshop. Jamiu went, the man spoke to him and later gave him money plus a job the following week.
We were grateful.
I am not sure Jamiu had worked with them for up to six months when the incident happened. The man had a house help living with them. The house help, as I heard, comes to deliver things to the man at the workshop.
There must have been a friendship between Jamiu and the girl because that is what Jamiu told me. So she came that day, the boss wasn’t around. She met Jamiu. Something happened between them and he raped her in their oga’s office!
Is this the devil at work?
Is someone “doing” my son?
Why would he rape a girl of 16 years?
The girl is a small girl.
Look, as a mother, this is not even the kind of news you want to hear any of your children are involved in, not to talk of your own son being the one who raped a small girl!
I was raped myself!
And no one fought for me. No one did anything about it! I know the many times I hated myself, was ashamed of myself, and wanted to kill my aunty, her husband, and most of all Ibro who raped me!
When Jamiu’s boss called me and told me, I wept. As a mother, I felt I had failed. As a woman, I knew what that small girl must suffer for years to come.
When I asked my son, he was going up and down and telling all kinds of stories. You see, he chose to let the devil use him, there are consequences.
I told him, do you know you have ruined this girl’s life?
Do you know what she will suffer in years to come?
He told me it was the work of the devil
All right. So we both went to meet the man because he called for me. I told him, “You will have to go and report him to the police. I will not habour a rapist under my roof.”
I followed Jamiu to the station. I was there when his boss joined us with the girl and he wrote a statement. Even though the police said we shouldn’t worry but go home to settle it because the girl didn’t have anybody apart from her boss. You know she is a house help, there was no real person on her side. In fact, even the boss wasn’t too keen on reporting, though he said he was disappointed in Jamiu and he sacked him but still, that girl is a human being. She is somebody’s child.
Do you know how many times I have hated myself, hated my parents for not even looking back after giving me to aunty years ago?
Yes, Jamiu has been charged to court. I hear he will be there for a long time. He is my son, I will visit him but he did wrong. He did wrong. I love him but he did wrong. That’s all I know.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)