Parents and adults generally have
responsibility to care for, educate, and discipline children but when the
children begin to detest the parents, then the situation calls for concern.
13 -year-old Blessing Chia
allegedly fell victim to regular beating by his step father, Mr Benjamin
Richard, 35, who, as she claimed, later lusted after her.
The allegation by the girl that
the step father serially raped her to the point of her getting pregnant is a
subject of police investigations.
Blessing told Sunday Vanguard,
“The first time my mother was not around, he took cane and was beating me and
told me that if I messed up, he would kill me, and that if I shouted or if my
mummy heard anything about it, he was going to kill me. “So the one that happened on
Thursday, November 13, 2014, I told him that I would tell my mummy and I
dared to see if he would kill me. So l told my mummy.
He raped me four times, the first
time was when my mother travelled to Makurdi, Benue State.’’
Blessing’s mother, Mrs Grace
Richard, 30, said her daughter reported to her that the stepfather raped her
but her husband denied it when she confronted him.
She confirmed that it was during
the period she travelled to her home state (Benue) and left her daughter in the
care of her stepfather that he first allegedly raped her. ‘’That was two months ago when I
travelled to Makurdi and she told me immediately I came back,” the mother said. “My husband denied and even
threatened to beat me black and blue if l ever asked him such a question
again”.
Grace said she was not, in the
real sense of it, married to the father of Blessing whom she had at the age of
17 before the father died in a motor accident last year.
Blessing’s mother said she and her
current husband have been together for four years during which she had a boy
child for him. The boy, she said, lives with her mother-in-law.
Mrs Martina Moses, Grace’s elder
sister, told Blessing’s story to Sunday Vanguard.
