Finding hope in a shelter

Sarah* couldn’t sit still. Her attention was divided between Disney’s Princess Sophia and watching her sleeping baby nearby.

It was Valentine’s Day and I was visiting the girls at Hope House, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in Lagos, Nigeria. Hope House is managed by the Pastor Bimbo Odukoya Foundation (PBOF) and its location is kept secret to protect the inhabitants, many of whom have cases pending in court.

Sarah was 15 when she was raped by a distant male relative. She had been sent from Osun State, where her parents are subsistence farmers, to Lagos to live with an ‘aunt’ so that she could go to school. The male relative also lived with them and he raped her when her guardian wasn’t home. She fell pregnant and months later when her teachers found out what had happened, they reported the case to the Ministry of Youth.

When I first met Sarah, early this year, she had been at the shelter for two months. We had talked about her daily schedule, which included special classes – she was preparing for her Junior School Certificate Examination (JSCE) – and the books she had read. Sarah also loves to cook and she was upset that she wasn’t allowed to do so. “It’s like punishment,” she had said. But she had been close to her delivery date and needed as much rest as possible.

“When Sarah first came to us, she was scared to talk about what had happened to her; she was always shaking. It was almost as if someone was going to put a dagger through her head if she spoke, she was that afraid. We had to give her a month to settle in; give her some space. With time and some mild therapy, she started adjusting and became more open,” said Funmi, the in-house psychologist.

Hope House also has a dedicated social worker, a matron and two caregivers. With the support of a few volunteers, they also double as class teachers for the pregnant girls who aren’t going to school.

The one-storey duplex has four en-suite rooms upstairs. The rooms are named Peace, Faith, Love and Joy. Two of the rooms are reserved for the girls. The other two are shared by victims of domestic violence, all adult women.

Downstairs, there’s a general living area where they watch TV and have discussions, a communal dining room, a classroom, and offices for the social worker and the psychologist. Security cameras are placed in strategic points and the feed is constantly monitored by a security guard. It is in this environment that Sarah found some healing and began to dream again.

“I want to become be a teacher. I just love teaching and I want to teach Home Economics, especially the cooking aspect.”

We discussed everything but the experience that had brought her to Hope House. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“That’s all everyone wants to talk about,” said 15-year-old Naomi*, another inhabitant of the house. “You’ll repeat the same story to lawyers, to police, to government social workers, to the judge. Just talk, talk, talk.”

Home? What home?

When I had walked into the house, Naomi had given me a big hug. We had met twice before. The first time was in November 2015, when her case was being taken up by PBOF. I had interviewed her then but later found that I couldn’t use the recording because I could barely hear a word she had said. But one thing I remembered was her response when I asked if she wanted to return home. “Home? What home?” It was the only time she had raised her voice.

Naomi’s abuse started when she was 12. Her stepfather worked in a different state and came home only on weekends. Every weekend, he raped her.

“Naomi told her mother, but she didn’t believe her,” said Osasu Paul-Azino, the coordinator at the PBOF.

The family relocated because of the ‘scandal’ and after Naomi recanted her statement, she was allowed to return home. She had been sent out of the house and had been staying with her mother’s friend. She wanted to go back to school and return to her family. In order to do so, she had to recant her statement.

The abuse continued when she returned. “I told my mummy the second time and she still didn’t believe me, so I just had to keep quiet.”

In late 2015, she spoke up again, this time to Nancy*, her vocational teacher at school. The teacher took up the case – and lost her job in the process because she kept pushing, even after repeated warnings from the school authorities that it was a family matter. She contacted PBOF and the team swung into action. The stepfather was arrested within the week.

“I was in church when they came to pick me up; I was not willing to go with them because I was so scared. Then they arrested the man and we went to the police station, then I came to the shelter,” Naomi said. “When I got here, I used to go to the Mirabel Centre [sexual assault referral centre in Lagos] for tests. I did some tests. I didn’t know then that I did a pregnancy test. It was negative.”

Her case is currently in court. But the outcome is not going to affect how she feels. “I don’t want to go back home. I am not willing to go back home. I feel protected here. I started in a new school. I’m enjoying the classes and the teachers are okay,” she said.

The origins of Hope House

PBOF Coordinator Osasu Paul-Azino shares a tender moment with one of the children at the shelter

Hope House started out catering to teenage pregnant girls, seeing them through the antenatal and postnatal period, stabilising them emotionally and then reuniting them with their families. In May 2015, however, it redirected its efforts towards helping survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Hope House is licensed as a shelter by the Ministry of Youth and collaborates closely with the Ministry of Justice. A few of the girls were brought to the shelter on the orders of the judges handling their cases.

The Pastor Bimbo Odukoya Foundation was established in December 2005 to promote and sustain the ideals of the late Pastor Bimbo Odukoya, who died in a plane crash that month. The Foundation has advocacy and intervention projects; the shelter is one of the latter.

Sarah and Naomi are two of 16 girls between the ages of 11 and 18 living at Hope House. Three of them are siblings, one of whom was raped by their landlord who chased the family out of his house because they reported the case to the police. Their mother is at the shelter with them.

Four of the girls are in varying stages of pregnancy. Four others have had their babies – one of the teen mothers is 13 years old.

Sarah has been at Hope House for eight months now. Her daughter is being cared for at a nearby orphanage while she goes to school. She passed her JSCE and is now in Senior Secondary One. She will be reconciled with her family at the end of July but the Foundation is proposing that she continues to live at the shelter.

“She can’t go back to living with that relative and there’s nothing waiting for her in Osun State. If she goes back there, it’s back to subsistence farming; there’ll be no education for her. And for this girl who has a baby that means you’re condemning two lives to poverty. So it’s important that she goes to school and while she goes to school, she’s sure that her baby is being taken care of so that she can concentrate on school,” Osasu said.

“We want her to achieve her dream of being a teacher and that involves going to university. We’re looking at how we can get her a scholarship. That’s a huge plan for us to take up because she’s one of several girls. On average it costs us over a million naira a month already to run the shelter in terms of school fees and other educational bills, feeding, salaries, vocational training and other needs.”

Hope House also has four women in residence. They are victims of domestic violence and have 11 children between them. “We have had to turn people away because we don’t have the space to take any more,” Osasu said. Funding comes mostly from the foundation’s partners and donors but it is a hand-to-mouth situation for the shelter.

None of the girls’ abusers have been sentenced yet, although five of the cases have been moved to a High Court for final judgment.

Before I left the shelter on Valentine’s Day, Naomi took me into a room where visitors had written messages on the walls. “I’ve not finished talking with you yet,” she said, even though our interview was over and I’d switched off my recorder. She told me who wrote what and when they’d visited. Afterwards, she pummeled me with questions relating to custody of a minor. I answered as best as I could but got stuck on some legalese. “Naomi, I’m not a lawyer. I can’t really explain all this; I don’t know the terminology,” I told her.

She smiled. “Don’t worry. When I become a lawyer, I’ll tell you what it’s called.”

*Some names have been changed