Dismantling the culture of victim blaming
By
Thu Mar 11 2021
I have been thinking a lot about sexual abuse in Nigeria, having recently reread Olisakwe’s Ogadinma (in which a teenager gets raped by a man she’s gone to for help, and Onyemelukwe’s The Son of the House (in which a little girl is molested by a teacher). In both instances, the victims are cowered into silence. Both victims have loving parents, yet they find it difficult to let them know what is going on.
Growing up, there were things we knew instinctively not to talk about, so while the inability of these characters to tell their parents of the abuse saddened me, it did not surprise me.