Not Just Hard Work, But Heart Work

As incidents of gender-based violence increase in Africa, those like Nigeria’s Kemi Dasilva-Ibru, are trying to bring relief to stigmatized victims.

- Peace Hyde

In May, when four high school boys attacked and sexually assaulted schoolgirls at the end of the final year examinations in broad daylight in Ikoyi, Lagos, it was a heart-breaking moment for Nigeria.

Opinions and views filled the media space about mass rape with the news going viral in only a few minutes. “I just could not believe what I was seeing. How can young boys behave in such a dreadful manner? They had scissors which they used to cut off the skirts of girls as they forced them down and tried to rape them while being cheered on by their fellow male students,” says Michale Mathews, CEO of MPD Logics and the eyewitness who broke the story.

Her heroic act on that fateful day prevented about 30 young girls from being sexually violated. In many parts of the country, the stigmatization of women who suffer abuse is still prevalent, but for one doctor, the time to change the rhetoric and take decisive action is now.

“For me, the tipping point was last year when I had a string of really bad cases that I was called in to assist with. The youngest case I ever had to deal with was a two-year-old and that was a very traumatic event. Then I had a young 11-year-old who was pregnant because she had been abused from age nine. I have always known that there was a need to do more,” says Dr. Kemi Dasilva-Ibru, founder of the Women At Risk International Foundation (WARIF).

Her first encounter with rape victims was at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital where she was a practicing obstetrician and gynaecologist.

“I first noticed the young girls and women that have had these harrowing experiences happen to them, that is rape or sexual abuse, and they would be seen in the facility and they were pretty much marginalized in terms of the care that was being given to them.