Sierra Leone News: Impact+ Launches Campaign against Sex Offenders
By Stephen V. Lansana
Impact + (plus), a non-governmental organization, has on Saturday December 28, 2019, launched a pedophile “Sugar Daddy” Campaign at the Africell American Corner in Freetown. The aim of the campaign is to help reduce teenage pregnancy and the resultant school dropout rate of female pupils in Sierra Leone.
The “sugar daddy” awareness raising campaign is a two-year project that targets 20,000 girls aged between 13 and 18 in upper primary and secondary schools across the country.
A UNICEF report indicates that 25 percent of females aged between 15 and 19 years first had sex before the age of 15. The same report shows that 62 percent of females marry before the age of 18; and 27 percent of Sierra Leonean girls are married off before the age of 15 years.
From the above figures it could be seen that although the government through the “Hands Off Our Girls Campaign” is working to reduce sexual offences against girls, the number of the offence has not dropped.
The Director of Impact Plus, Mrs. Aminata Kargbo, said, “In the pilot phase (1 year), we will directly reach 10,000 girls. After which, the campaign will be scaled up nationwide and it will reach 20,000 girls in two years with the ‘sugar daddy’ awareness sessions and indirectly reach approximately 70,000 people in six months and 280, 000 in two years. Our goal is to contribute to education in adherence to the national call for human capital development through ‘sugar daddy’ awareness sessions to reduce teenage pregnancy and school dropouts among girls.”
Kargbo said that Impact Plus will be holding in two-hour group sessions with all the girls in schools across the nation. “In the one-year pilot phase, we will target 10,000 girls in 50 schools nationwide with a tailored core message that sexual partnering with older men is a risky behavior.”
She said that teenage pregnancy and HIV infection are increasing in Sierra Leone, and attributed this trend partly to transactional sex occasioned by sugar daddies to offset financial needs of young girls.
Detective Samuel Abdulai S. Bangura, the National Crime Officer attached to Family Support Unit (FSU) of the Sierra Leone Police, said that one of the methods which older men use to lure under-aged girls into sex is by to offering them material things such as money, gifts, and other luxury items like cars. He added that this attracts the girls, and divert their attention.
Detective Bangura said that parents with poor parenting skills usually encourage their girls to be involved sexually with older men as a way of living. He said that in the end it is the girls who usually become victims whilst their parent will benefit. He advised parents to deviate from such behavior.
He told the girls to report any form of harassment from abusers. He added that according to the laws of Sierra Leone, it is an offence for a man to call a girl below the age of 18 years his ‘wife’.
“Men should not call any child below 18 years their ‘wife’ or touch them in a sexual manner. The offence is meeting a child for sexual purposes, and it is a very serious offence because that is where the abuse starts,” Detective Bangura emphasized.
“The FSU frowns at such attitudes,” he asserted. He encouraged the girls to report any attempt an older man will make to sexually abuse them.
A senior secondary pupil of Ahmadiyya Muslim Secondary School, Zainab Sahid Tholley admonished her colleagues to be aware of the negative impact of the “Sugar Daddies” towards their education. She said that men usually use expensive gifts and money in a bid to lure them into having sex. She called on her colleagues to resist, reject and report any gift from “so call Sugar Daddies”.