MONROVIA – Mrs. Ne-Suah B. Livingstone of Rescue for Abandon Children in Hardship (REACH) wants rapists castrated and imprisoned. Her harsh call comes in reaction to the rape of a 10-year-old by her brother who allegedly stuffed her mouth with a bedsheet while defiling her.
Report by Mae Azango, [email protected]
Mrs. Livingstone said, “Even though the AFL Chief of staff said perpetrators should be killed, but because Liberia signed the UN convention to not partake in capital punishment, a perpetrator like this guy who was caught red-handed should be castrated and sent to prison for life. Because, if he is only castrated and left to live in the community, he might use his fingers to rape and molest other children.”
The victim, name withheld, was raped on Independence Day in the Paynesville, Jacob Town Community. At least three reported cases of rape occurred on that day.
The medical report in possession of FrontPageAfrica reveals that the victim was brutally raped and sodomized and is seeking medical care.
“She took several stitches and is undergoing treatment, but she is presently wearing pampers because her anus is not holding any longer,” said Livingstone.
“Even though the AFL Chief of staff said perpetrators should be killed, but because Liberia signed the UN convention to not partake in capital punishment, a perpetrator like this guy who was caught red-handed should be castrated and sent to prison for life. Because, if he is only castrated and left to live in the community, he might use his fingers to rape and molest other children.”
– Mrs. Ne-Suah B. Livingstone, Rescue for Abandon Children in Hardship (REACH)
Mrs. Livingstone: “I had her relocate to one of our partners’ home because everybody was just talking about her community. The child is traumatized that whenever she sees a man she runs away to hide. She even called me to say she wants to live at an all-girls home because our partner has a son younger than her but she is still scared of him and does not want to live anywhere with boys except it is a baby. When she was at the hospital, she would even refuse a male nurse or doctor to remove her pamper for checkup, but only female nurses.”
Livingstone, who sponsors the victim, told FrontPageAfrica that the 10-year-old was living with an older woman who is not her relative because the biological mother, a street hawker, often left the child to roam the community while she went street hawking.
The foster parent’s son, according to Livingstone, brought a 32-year-old to also live in the house.
She explained that on Independence Day, all the kids in the yard where the victim lived were watching television at the neighbors’ house, when the 32-year-old perpetrator, Moses Tarnue, also known as Papay, called the victim to go buy him cold water when it was getting dark after which the child asked him for safety matches to light the fire but when she returned the safety matches, he told her to put it on his table. But when she entered the room, he grabbed her and stuffed the bed sheet into her mouth, raped and sodomized her.
“The police would take money from the victim’s parents to make arrest. When you get to a police station for an officer to escort the perpetrator, the victim’s relatives would have to chatter a car or buy gas for the police. When we arrived at the Paynesville Magisterial Court, every room I entered to proceed with the case file, I had to pay money. I paid the typist to type, I paid to register the file, I paid for photocopy and I paid to take the letter to Criminal Court ‘E’, and put gas in the car. I paid US$55.00 to have the case reach to Criminal Court ‘E’.”
– Mrs. Ne-Suah B. Livingstone, Rescue for Abandon Children in Hardship (REACH)
She further explained that during their search for the child since she had not returned after taking the matches back to the perpetrator, they knocked on his door several times but he refused to respond or open the open. This prompted them to break down the door.
“They knocked for nearly 15 minutes and he would not open the door so they broke down the door and met the victim lying in a pool of blood and suffocating under the bed sheet, while the perpetrator was trying to remove the ceiling to escape. But he was caught by the women who held him until the police arrived to arrest him,” she narrated
According to the police charge sheet, the perpetrator said he did the act under the influence of alcohol. He was charged for statutory rape and forwarded to court on July 29 and was later sent to jail at the Monrovia Central Prison.
Madam Livingstone admonished the government to take rape cases seriously, else citizens would begin to take law into their own hands by means of mob action.
According to her, she observed that the police and the courts are not helping the situation.
“The police would take money from the victim’s parents to make arrest. When you get to a police station for an officer to escort the perpetrator, the victim’s relatives would have to chatter a car or buy gas for the police. When we arrived at the Paynesville Magisterial Court, every room I entered to proceed with the case file, I had to pay money. I paid the typist to type, I paid to register the file, I paid for photocopy and I paid to take the letter to Criminal Court ‘E’, and put gas in the car. I paid US$55.00 to have the case reach to Criminal Court ‘E’,” she said.
She added: “The child’s mother who would have never afforded that kind of money, asked me to take over the case. So if REACH was not here, the mother would have dropped this case and the child situation would have gotten worse because she would not have money to treat the child. These are the reasons why mothers are not willing to report rape cases. Let the government come down hard and tell the police and the court not to take money from parents reporting rape cases because they are already grieving over the raped children’s situation.”