How Akwa Ibom girl, 8, escaped death after Bishop accused her of witchcraft
A non-profit organisation has rescued a girl of 8 in Akwa Ibom State who was allegedly badly maltreated on account of her being a witch.
Miss Mary, accused of many things including blinding the sight of her father through spiritual means, is now in the custody of the Child’s Right And Rehabilitation Network (CRARN), which came to her redemption.
Narrating her ordeals to the organisation, the 8-year-old told a CRARN personnel: “My father used to beat me with sticks and machetes with the help of my elder brother, Faith (aka AY); because our Bishop said I was the cause of his blindness.
“He pressed my neck on the ground asking me to confess or he would kill me.
“I heard stories of children taken to the forest and they’ll never return back because they’re ‘witches’ and ‘wizards’; and stories of ruffians who came and picked children, even elderly people in the night and killed them, and I thought of where my two brothers were, with no answers coming up. I also thought and pray of how I can escape,” Mary recalled.
The organisation said in a statement that it learned of her ordeals after a long-standing CRARN volunteer, Pastor Okon John intervened in Mary’s matter.
“He decided to act before the two days left for Mary to be inhumanly sent to her early grave elapsed. He asked to be wheeled out of the hospital on a stretcher where he is currently receiving treatment for his accidental fractured legs and mounted a bike and arrived the village of Eyofin in Udung Uko in Oron area. Oron area remains a daredevil for witchcraft-stigmatized children,” the organisation wrote on Facebook.
“Pastor John hired a tricycle who drove him and Mary about 55 KM to the CRARN Children Centre, Ikot Afaha, Eket, Akwa Ibom State where she joined her two brothers, Elijah and Robinson and other children.”
The group thanked Pastor John for his “resilience, courage and human sympathies as his singular act had saved multiple stigmatized children, including Mary”.
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