A little girl who escaped death after she was labeled a witch before being brutalized has finally reunited with the father.
The girl reunited with the father
A little girl named Emem, who was one of the children picked on the
streets of Eket in Akwa Ibom state during a campaign tour by the
Ministry of Women Affairs, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and related matters (NAPTIP), and Child Protection Network (CPN), has been reunited with her father.
This child was handed over to the CRARN personnel for care and
reunification. The girl was giving different stories and locations out
of fear of going back to her parents.
But the light beamed one day as she confided in one of the children
in the center her reasons for not revealing her father’s location so
her friend divulged it to a caregiver.
Her reasons included long term starvation in the churches in the
name of fasting, rejection by friends in the school, torture by her
father and stepmother ( who’s also a prophetess.)
She said she roved different prayer houses for more than a year
without going to school. She narrated her ordeal in the hands of a
prophet who kept her standing in the nights till daybreak so that she
would not be called out to the coven. Anytime she slept off she would be
brutalized with belts and sticks.
When she could not bear the brunt of the beatings any longer, she
sneaked out of the church and ran away. Since then, she’s been roaming
the streets and sleeping in the bush or uncompleted buildings with other
street children. She said when her father met her one day, he rained
curses on her and prayed that she dies soon.
Her father was present yesterday in the Centre signing documents to accept her back home.
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