Abuse of the girl child: different shades, perpetrators and health implications

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Sixteen year old Omonsiegho (not her real name), an SS3 girl in a mixed sex Boarding School was asked to stand on her desk; her offence? Not paying attention. For the rest of that class, the punisher; a middle aged, unmarried ‘Geography Teacher’ ignored her pains, suffering and tears as she shifted weight from one lower limb to the other, seeking any position that will reduce her pain and give her some comfort.
 
A few days later, Omonsiegho was called out to the front of her class and asked to sit on the floor. The rivulets of tears as she tried to express her innocence were made irrelevant by the relentless instructions and counter instructions shot at her to stand, sit, move away, and lie down. The old ‘angel and arch angel of Geography' as he was often referred to, and whose selective notoriety the School Authorities seemed resigned to put up with was  at it again.
 
The young girl went through emotional trauma she alone can truly describe, as she tried to make sense of it all.
 
The questions on the minds of many of the boys and girls  who may have watched several episodes of this type of behaviour from the Geography teacher may not be too difficult to imagine; many of them would have liked to know if he would  do this to his own biological daughter if she did whatever.
 
As it turned out following investigations, the Geography teacher was in the habit of coming down hard on female students, and especially the bright and beautiful ones .It was his way of softening them up before launching attacks. He was however friendly with the boys and always ready to assist them, even financially.
 
If one might ask; is there something fundamentally different  between people who have willingly gone through  the God given  process  of reproducing themselves and those  who have not or are unwilling to do so? Considering that the human mind is the most complicated and unpredictable entity known to man, how do you tell which Classroom teacher is capable or incapable of doing what ,when it comes to  health of School  children and child abuse?
 
Mr Geography teacher is using the persistent physical and emotional abuse of Omonsiegho as a way of getting something he alone badly wants? How many other young girls have gone through similar experience? Can Omonsiegho find the peace of mind to read her books in the prevailing conditions?
 
Child abuse comes in as many shades as can be imagined. In majority of cases and for those cases involving sex, the perpetrators are not people you very readily suspect;
 
Commonly  under continuous subordination, senior students may subject junior others to various forms of abuse.
 
Teachers at the top  may engage in all sorts of inappropriate behaviour if they find themselves in positions of absolute power, where no one cares.

 
There have been  well documented cases of heads of religious organizations sexually abusing  daughters  and  their mothers among  their followers, doing so for years without  any one daring to cry out about the evil acts. Where such followers are regarded as mere numbers, physical abuse may take many forms  including excessive chores, whiplashing, shaking, pinching and kicking.
 
Cases involving Moms and Step Daughters have also been followed where the girl child is starved, placed on long periods of starvation diet or low quality diets for refusing to get involved in abnormal or inappropriate sexual relationship with the woman she calls mother.
 
Uncles, Aunties, care takers and care givers who are deviant and yet see nothing wrong with their brains have in several studies been found to  subject children kept in their care to different forms of abuse including those which place sexual health and reproductive career of the girl child in jeopardy.
 
Read more at http://thenationonlineng.net/abuse-girl-child-different-shades-perpetrat...