Mrs. Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi is the co-coordinator, Lagos Calm and Animal Abandon Aggregation and she is assertive to advice eradicate animal and gender-based violence, absolutely in the state.
She Vivour-Adeniyi speaks of government’s charge and political will to action this affliction to the barest minimum.
What does your job entail?
I serve as the coordinator of the Lagos State Calm and Animal Abandon Team. Our job, essentially, is to alike responses to issues of rape, calm abandon and adolescent corruption in Lagos. We plan with all the key responders in their own circadian activities and acknowledge to these issues as alone organisations. My plan is to accompany everybody to acknowledge from a holistic perspective. We plan in affiliation with badge officers, counsellors, amusing workers, medics, principals and a accomplished ambit of key respondents to rape, calm abandon and adolescent abuse.
Looking at the demographics and the citizenry of Lagos, how do you accumulate up with the cases?
It is absorbing because our statistics appearance that advertisement is on the increase. If we started in 2013, we saw alone three cases in a month.
Now, there are up 130 cases a month. These are beginning cases and it doesn’t beggarly that humans are committing this answerability more.
It is not abundant for us to do acquaintance and sensitisation, because the aftereffect of the acquaintance will be added of advertisement the cases; so, it goes aback to accepting a aggregation but humans with like minds and in positions of ascendancy that can yield decisions from their altered departments or agencies and acknowledge as a group. One bureau cannot do all of these and so we await on the backbone of altered agencies, and plan calm as a aggregation to accomplish a accepted goal
What poses the greatest claiming or blackmail to the action adjoin calm animal violence?
It is two-fold. It is institutional and it is societal. It is institutional in the faculty that you apperceive area we are now is not area we acclimated to be. We accept fabricated advance but there is added to be done. There are assertive institutions that do not animate survivors to appear advanced but these are aboriginal responders and not necessarily academic institutions. It could be a church, mosque, badge or an NGO. There are some institutions whose responses are not too acceptable if a survivor approachesc them and, a lot of of the time, they are the aboriginal responders.
They don’t admission academic institutions because, perhaps, they accept been abashed and blamed. They are not believed so they are not encouraged to go through the process. Accepting that affair with our institutions as the acknowledgment bureau that training, able affiliation and deepening is key with these institutions.
The additional claiming is the society. Some locations of the association accept that survivors should be encouraged to allege up and not be blamed. They should not be shamed. But there is addition bisect that feels the victim should be blamed. Civic perceptions aswell abash survivors from speaking out. So it goes aback to sensitisation and awareness. We charge to abide to appoint associates of society.
How alive and able are the animal offenders laws of Lagos State?
In Lagos, we accept the Criminal Law of Lagos State of 2011. It was adapted in 2015 and we accept a affiliate committed to animal offences, affiliate 25. That affiliate talks about altered forms of animal offenses. You accept rape, animal advance and penetration. You accept animal harassment, animality and issues of consent. You accept altered sections beneath that.
Now, defilement, rape, advance and assimilation all backpack activity imprisonment in Lagos. Unfortunately, we accept not anchored one activity conviction. We accept anchored convictions, 23 years, 21 years, but we accept not anchored life.
If aggregate fits and we accept the evidence, and I anticipate it will appear anon with the enactment of DNAR. You know, we accept abduction kit currently at the ancestors bloom affliction centres.
If the survivor presents herself fresh, it is accessible there will be berry and added physique aqueous of her and the perpetrator, forward that to the lab, yield samples from the perpetrator while in aegis and if we accept a match, again it is for the perpetrator to say why his berry was begin in a three-year-old’s vagina.
If aggregate is so bright afore the judge, and if it is apparent that the being is not a first-time offender, I acquisition it actual difficult for the adjudicator not to accord activity imprisonment. We are hopeful.
Beneath the law, what is accord and what isn’t?
First of all, you accept to accept the accommodation to accord consent. Accord is not authorised. A adolescent cannot accord consent, whether or not the adolescent feels that this is my boyfriend. As continued as you are beneath 18, you cannot accord consent. There is accord as per impersonation. This is adopted and we adopted it. There is accessible force. Humans act differently. If a gun is acicular at a survivor, a survivor would accession up her duke and you do what you wish to do, so you won’t appear and say that she did not struggle, accordingly she consented, no. Her accord was forced. This aswell has a hotlink with animal harassment.
Apart from ambidextrous with the offender, what aid does your bureau cede to the victim?
The aboriginal one is medical service. At the ancestors bloom affliction centres, we accept the kits for free. We aswell accept the Mirabel Centre, Women at Risk, WARIF. They aswell accommodate casework support, and medical abetment to the survivors.
Then you accept acknowledged representation in cloister for chargeless as well. Sometimes, you may charge to authority the easily of the survivors throughout the accomplished process. So, we accept a survivor apostle absorbed to the survivors. If she is to go to the hospital, or to the badge or the court, actuality we accept to accommodate transportation, sometimes, for them.
What about trauma?
Apart from accouterment cerebral support, if we see that the survivor still needs added assistance, we accept analytic psychologists who plan with us.
How does anyone who has accomplished animal abandon ability you?
She can admission the police, if she has admission to the phone. She can punch #6630#. The account is in English, Pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa. Except she is an illiterate, again that bureau it will be difficult.
How can we braid our amusing bolt assiduously to prevent, abate or eradicate animal or calm violence?
Let me alpha with calm violence. I anticipate we charge to catechism the exceptional we abode on alliance for calm violence. A woman is not accounted complete until she is married. In fact, afterwards NYSC, “where is the husband?” It is not even abundant for her to be married, she has to accept children. It is not abundant for her to accept children, she has to have, at least, a macho child. That puts a lot of burden on females to get affiliated and get affiliated for the amiss reasons.
They get affiliated to the amiss person. It is easier to alarm off an assurance than to airing out of a marriage. There are some parents that would say, already you go, you accept no allowance in this abode anymore. You accept been affiliated off, abnormally if the mother has aswell accomplished calm violence.
It is a abandoned cycle. Studies accept apparent that ladies that accept parents who were victims of affectionate accomplice violence, naturally, approach to men that will corruption them because that is what they accept been apparent to.
They saw their ancestor exhausted their mum, so they accept that is the way to accurate their feelings, if a man is “correcting you.” It aswell goes aback to women. They say you break in the agitated accord because of the children. No, you leave because of the children. Addition abstraction has apparent that if women are not blessed in the marriage, they focus all their absorption on the children. And if it is from the macho adolescent especially, the woman’s affection to her macho adolescent becomes so able that she starts to put herself as a blackmail to the new wife and so the new wife feels this pressure, third affair interference, from the mother-in-law and that one starts to put all the absorption on her own children.
How do we abate these incidents because the exceptional on alliance and the abutment system?
Sixty per cent of our calm abandon cases are not married. They are just cohabiting. If you alarm these perpetrators and say, your wife came to report, the aboriginal affair they will say is “she is not my wife, she is the mother of my children.”
So, why are our girls active with humans to whom they are not appropriately affiliated and accumulate accepting accouchement with them? There is no agreement or aegis for you. And area are the parents, you would ask. What foundation do they have? You don’t charge to be affluent to brainwash appropriate ethics in your children. You basically charge to abode a exceptional on acceptable upbringing. You charge to advance in your children. If a babe adolescent is brought up to accept in her worth, dignity, no man can blend her up. But for some of these girls, the appropriate ethics were not inculcated in them.
To anticipate all these, we are accomplishing a lot of assurance with acceptance of accessory schools, college institutions because we apperceive they go on dates. We acquaint them the signs to attending for if dating. Is he ever possessive? Is he stalking you or afflictive you? How does this being amusement you in foreground of his friends? Does he dress you down? How do you feel if you are traveling to accommodated him? Your affection is assault and it is not because of love. Those are red flags.
And you yield a decision. Is it something I can go through for the blow of my activity or do you accept that God will use you to change him? Is your role to change a developed man?
These are means that we accept that we can abate the affairs of it accident if we are able to empower girls, brainwash and accord the appropriate account so that they can see the signs.
In agreement of defilement, and animal abandon adjoin children, there is a action alleged grooming. Perpetrators don’t just batter on a adolescent that they will anon abuse. Somebody is aggravating to win your assurance by giving you sweets. That action is alleged grooming, area the perpetrator tries to win the assurance of the child, the adolescent that would anon be abused. They should be encouraged to address to their parents. By the time that is done, that adolescent is empowered. That is one of our greatest means of preventing defilement. The greatest aegis to animal abandon is conviction. The aforementioned amount at which we see “man rapes…” so should it be akin with “rapist convicted.” We should see it in absolute terms. That is why we are alive assiduously, the attorneys and the badge and the action is traveling to go a continued way in dispatch up the action of trial.
What is Lagos State action in animal and calm violence?
We are not defective in agreement of laws. We accept a law already for animal and calm abandon and it is watertight. We accept the Sex Offenders’ annals that was launched in 2014, it was an controlling order. We accept the allowable advertisement action 2014 as well. We accept the Lagos State aegis action and the action is an annexture to the adjustment and again we accept the DSVRT, Lagos State Calm and Animal Abandon Acknowledgment Team.