The New Idea

Leveraging her position as a public figure, Princess reaches a national audience through print and television media, focusing especially on children who may be suffering abuse and on family members at a loss as to how to address the problem. Princess shifts the dialogue away from family stigma towards individual healing by offering such practical information as how to identify the non-physical symptoms of abuse and by decrying media mishandling their reporting of abuse cases. This effort exposes the problem by bringing children’s experiences to light. She knows that this shift in public perception and behavior is the first step to mitigating the long-term consequences of sexual abuse.

Princess capitalizes on the opportunity not just to expose, but also to begin treating and solving the issue of child sexual abuse. She launched a hotline with a national referral network to address the immense need. In addition, Princess has developed a crisis center model that completes her vision of focusing more skilled attention on the immediate safety and long-term health of sexually abused children. The crisis center addresses the need for medical care, emergency shelter, forensic lab work, and training of competent child mental health professionals. As her interventions allow more sexually abused children begin to speak out and heal, Princess is constructing a national network of allies to replicate the crisis center model throughout the country.

The Problem

Child sexual abuse is alarmingly widespread in Nigeria. Affecting people of all ages and both sexes, the problem is hidden by social taboos about “family matters” and sexuality in general. In Nigeria, where large extended families often live together, opportunities for abuse are common. Even in urban areas where the number of family members in one house is smaller than in rural areas, families will often host relatives for weeks at a time. It is estimated that in Nigeria one in seven boys and one in three girls will be sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

Even the shortest episode of abuse can have long-term effects on a child’s psychological and physical well-being. Most responses focus on punishing the abuser, for example, when an older male has “defiled” a young girl; but little attention is placed on same-sex abuse and on cases where the abuser is female. None of these usual responses properly addresses the needs of the child. An inadequate response can exacerbate the problem and the victim’s pain is often internalized, with detrimental results.

As is true of other forms of abuse, children who have been sexually abused may later become abusers, caught in a cycle of violence that is difficult to break. Because these children are also more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior, the stakes are high in an era of HIV and AIDS. In addition, these young people may struggle with low self-esteem and are less likely to finish school, and girls are more likely to have early and frequent pregnancies.

Taboos about privacy and sex prevent a healthy dialogue about the problem. Resources available to children who have been abused are not comprehensive and are sometimes misleading. Some literature even places a portion of blame on the child. If the sexually abused child or a safe family member does seek recourse, he or she is faced with limited options. Police and law enforcement have no established protocol for responding to abuse allegations in a sensitive manner, and removing a child from an abusive situation is difficult and often fails. Nigeria’s few forensic labs are unable to provide adequate testing for rape. Mental health resources are scarce, with few agencies specializing in children’s needs and with limited understanding of what constitutes sexual abuse. Citizen organizations that deal with related issues of domestic violence or children’s health are ill-equipped to treat and support sexually abused children. The result of these inadequacies is a cultural ignorance and a societal failure that allow the problem to continue with detrimental long-term effects.

The Strategy

Princess’s strategy evolved from basic media outreach to a national effort focused equally on public awareness and healing for sexually abused children. After publishing poems to process her own experience of sexual abuse, Princess used her celebrity to incite dialogue about child sexual abuse and its consequences—this in a period when “women’s columns” ignored sexual abuse and discussed fashion and recipes. Her growing network of support within the media became the initial strategy she used to form her organization, Media Concern, in 2003. To shift public perception in the press, Media Concern monitors media coverage of child sexual abuse cases and maintains a media manual for journalists on the subject. Media Concern recently launched the Yellow Ribbon Awards to recognize balanced and progressive coverage of child sexual abuse cases. These strategies have become models for awareness of other controversial subjects such as domestic violence, prostitution, and trafficking.

As sexually abused children and their family members began to reach out to her, Princess used this opportunity to develop a telephone hotline for counseling and support. The hotline has generated an enormous response—processing over 2,000 calls during the first two years. To increase access to the hotline, Princess negotiated toll-free numbers for the hotline with Nigeria’s top three mobile providers. Landlines in Nigeria are unreliable, and nationwide toll-free numbers can be difficult to obtain, but Princess continues to work with the national telecom company to widen access to the hotline as much as possible. Many callers just need to be listened to, to be reassured, and to have their pain and confusion validated. The hotline reinforces Princess’s vision of a movement focused on individual trauma and healing.

Since the launch of the hotline, Princess has trained volunteers (most with backgrounds in counseling) and mental health professionals to work with sexually abused children, and she plans to develop this aspect of her work through the crisis centers. Her training efforts seek especially those who have experienced sexual abuse, to be able to engage children in a positive process that will reinforce their own healing.

Princess also anticipated that many more people than those reached by the hotline would be in need of direct, urgent services. To respond, she developed a referral network of sympathetic service providers in various regions of Nigeria. Few, however, focused full-time on child sexual abuse. Thus to strengthen the network of support, Princess identifies people who have benefited from the hotline’s support and who recognize the broader implications of her work; she encourages such people to become local support hubs for others in their region. This has been especially powerful in northern Nigeria where there are few service providers addressing sexual abuse and related issues. This network has spread her crisis center model. Princess also expanded the Board of Media Concern to represent the wider mission, including not only leading media figures but also citizen and business sector leaders, a member of the clergy, and a physician.

Princess realizes that as her awareness work brings more and more children out of the shadows, the enormity of the issue can no longer be adequately handled by the referral network, although the network will still play a critical role in addressing the problem. The hotline has referred 500 cases, and Princess takes many children into her own home. The crisis center model is designed to develop institutional capacity to stem the long-term effects of child sexual abuse and fill the gaps in the response of law enforcement, medical, and mental health personnel. Along with capacity for ongoing counseling and support, the crisis center will be able to dispense emergency contraception, administer rape kits, and collect forensic evidence (most hospitals do not) for possible litigation. Princess is also negotiating with the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research to be able to dispense post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV and AIDS. These early interventions are critical, as they identify trauma and initiate healing. Princess is negotiating funding for the first crisis center in Lagos.

To better represent her two-part mission, Princess has formed an umbrella organization to encompass both the media and awareness efforts and the hotline and crisis centers. The media and awareness efforts will have a nationwide reach, and the crisis centers will use a franchise model. Her national network of allies will expand across Nigeria.

The Person

Since 1978, Princess has published poems to process her two experiences with sexual abuse—at a young age and again in her teens—to reach others abused as children. Discovered in her early twenties by the publisher of the Nigerian daily The Guardian, Princess began to rise in the media world, working in print, television, and radio. She focused all her efforts on child sexual abuse, eventually landing a weekly two-page column in Punch. Princess developed a devoted audience and joined a small community of socially engaged journalists. She worked briefly at Journalists Against AIDS (founded by Ashoka Fellow Omololu Falobi) and gained national media contacts and international citizen sector experience.

While researching a book on sexuality, Princess discovered articles detailing the long-term psychological and behavioral effects of sexual abuse. She immediately recognized herself in the profiles, and understood at last her years of high-risk behavior and unhealthy relationships. Princess realized the impact on Nigerian society of an undoubtedly large number of untreated young people in situations similar to hers.

Four years after she launched Media Concern to raise awareness and to address the psychological wellness of sexually abused children, Princess completed her secondary school diploma equivalency exam, and is pursuing further training in psychology and law.