Rape is the worst crime that a human being can do on another human being. Invading someone’s privacy and violating there most intimate areas is a scar that most people don’t forget easily.
Ask anyone who has experienced a rape ordeal and you won’t even have the guts to listen to what they have been through. It is therefore not cool, when a rapist is allowed to go scot free or with minimal sentence. It is like laughing at the victims.
There has been an outpouring of outrage across Sierra Leone over the sentencing of a 70-year-old rapist to two days in jail. The elder was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl, whose parents he served as a night watchman.
Sierra Leoneans took to social media and radio following the sentence, with some calling for the sacking of the judge responsible. Gender equality and rights campaigners said the move by a Freetown High Court was a slap on the face of the efforts to curtail sexual and gender-based violence in the country.
The convict was scheduled for release on Wednesday. Reports indicated that Justice John Bosco Allieu had doubted the man’s mental state, even though he failed to order a psychiatric evaluation on him.
The ruling came just days after the launch of a national campaign against rape, spearheaded by First Lady Fatima Bio.
The high profile campaign dubbed Hands Off Our Girls, was launched in Freetown over the weekend by President Julius Maada Bio and graced by five West African first ladies.
The president and his celebrity wife have boosted the fight against sexual violence, which was rife in Sierra Leone, with words and actions in the last seven month of his coming to power.
Notably, President Bio recently heightened the debate around rape with his call for a harsher punishment for anyone found guilty of committing it.