Nigeria has convicted only 18 rapists in its entire legal history, according to human rights lawyer Evans Efeli. That is shocking, considering that the number of rape cases per month is much higher than that number.
Recently, in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel sought stiffer laws to deport migrants after a 13-year old girl claimed she was kidnapped and raped by migrants.
The girl would later confess to fabricating the story.
We hear of rape fabrication stories everywhere, and they involve everyone from American footballers to random folks. Brian Banks, an American football stat spent 5 years in prison and was registered as a sex offender when his classmate accused him of rape.
There are cases where falsely accused men are scarred for so long that they end up committing suicide.
In Nigeria, the story swings both ways. The victim, mostly female, is seen by a significant part of society as complicit, and the what-was-she-wearing blame games set in. The male, a lot of the time, is also seen as guilty until proven innocent.
In all honesty, there are bigger problems in Nigeria that make this problem hard to tackle. There is the lack of thorough investigation of cases, the reluctance of victims and their guardians to come forward because of shame. A lot of the time, the cases are thrown out of court for simple lack of evidence.
We started with a simple “How can we handle false accusations of rape?” but moved to even bigger underlying issues.
The first question is this:
[poll id=”12″]The second is:
[poll id=”13″]Comments
