A total of 150 cases of rape and sexual violence have been reported, while 20 people have been convicted for the offences in Edo State.

The state coordinator of Sexual and Gender Based Violence Response Team (SGBV-RT), Charity Ebosele, a lawyer, disclosed this while speaking at sensitization programme organized by the Edo State National Orientation Agency with the theme, ‘Curbing of the increasing wave of rape and gender based violence’.

Ebosele, while calling on men to stop all form of violence against women, stated that forcefully having canal knowledge of a woman is a grievous offence even as she said that there were also cases of women sexually abusing men, but noted that this is not often reported.

She further disclosed that at the height of COVID-19 pandemic, the Edo State Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) recorded high cases of rape and sexual violence, urging the public to report cases of rape and sexual violence to the centre.

Ebosele said: “There is no day in the country that rape and sexual violence cases are not reported. Some victims also do not report cases because of how the society will look at them, but I say that the shame is on the perpetrators not the victims.”

Meanwhile, the Public Relations Officer of NDLEA in the state, Ofoyeju Mitchell, has warned that use of hard drugs damages organs of the body, lead to depression and psychosis as well as early death.

Delivering a lecture on ‘The National Action Against Drug Abuse: Trafficking and other Social Vices’ at the event, Mitchell said: “An estimated 192 million people used cannabis in 2018, making it the most used drug globally. In comparison, 58 million people used opioids in 2018, which accounted for 66 per cent of the estimated 167,000 deaths related to drug use disorder in 2017.

“About 1.4 million drug users are living with HIV, 5.5 million with hepatitis C and 1.2 million are living with both hepatitis C and HIV,” he added. (Daily Sun)

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