You are about to read a very shocking true life story!
Three
friends – Habeeb Adisa (25), Kehinde Aderinoye (25) and Ilyas Ogundimu
(27) – raped one of their female neighbours, a young woman, who is their
close friend in Iju area of Lagos.
The
victim, 19-year-old Adenike (not real name), a hair stylist,
volunteered to speak with Saturday PUNCH, saying she summoned the
courage to speak about her ordeal because she did not want them to go
free and do the same to someone else.
Adisa
Narrating
how she was violated by the three men whom she trusted most in their
neighbourhood, Adenike told PUNCH that not once did she suspect within
the two years she knew them that they had such a heinous plan for her.
Calmly, but with a lot of anger and pain showing in her eyes,
Adenike
said, “I became friends with them as neighbours two years ago when my
mother first rented an apartment in the area. Kehinde began to make
advances to me. But I told him we were friends and did not want to be in
a relationship with him. I have always rejected his advances. Later he
would tell Habeeb and Ilyas to approach me to appeal on his behalf to
accept his proposal, but I made them to understand that I could not go
out with him. But we still talked and sat together in the neighbourhood
as friends.”
Unknown
to Adenike, the gentle disposition of her three friends was just a
façade for the plan they had hatched on how to sexually assault her.
On Wednesday, June 17, 2015, an opportunity presented itself for the rapist friends to put their plan to work.
Adenike continued:
“In
the morning of that day, around 9.30am, I went over Kehinde’s house
like I usually did sometimes when I had nothing to do at home. I trusted
them completely and usually went there to while away the time. Habeeb
and Ilyas were there also.
We
were just talking when Habeeb suddenly came to me and picked me up. He
threw me on the bed and I told him that I didn’t like that kind of
play.
I
said, ‘If this is part of your playful habit I am not up for it.’ But
as he threw me on the bed, before I could stand up, he lay on me and
pinned me down firmly. Kehinde quickly came over and started to remove
my underwear. That was when I knew what they wanted to do. I struggled
with them but they pinned me down and took turns to rape me. When I was
screaming, one of them quickly went to the CD player, which was on at
the time and turned on the music to maximum volume so that it would
drown out my voice.”
When
they finished, the three friends smiled in relish, it was learnt. They
told their prey to pretend that what happened to her was a mere sexual
encounter.
“They told me to just forget what
happened and keep it between the four of us. But I realised that if I
was afraid of stigma and kept it to myself, they would walk free and
even boast to their friends about what they did to me. They would surely
do it to someone else,” Adenike said.
Bruised
and battered, Adenike summoned the courage to approach someone she
trusted in the neighbourhood and narrated what happened to her. She was
immediately advised to go to the Iju Police Division and report the
incident.
As soon as she reported, some landlords in the area rose in the men’s defence.
Adenike’s
mother said that because the parents of the rapists are landlords in
the area, they first threatened her that if she decided to make the
issue a police case, she would lose. But on Thursday, after the police
had arrested the suspects, Punch reports that they witnessed as families
of the culprits and other residents of the area came out to the police
station to beg Adenike’s mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment