Assaulted Deeper Life School student narrates ordeal, names abusers

The 11-year-old student of the Deeper Life High School, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Don Davis, who was allegedly assaulted and molested by senior students and teachers in the school, has finally narrated his ordeal, while naming those who abused him.

Davis who spoke on his ordeals in a 45-minutes’ Facebook Live session moderated by his mother, Deborah Okezie, on Saturday, December 2, said the assault started after the now suspended school principal, Solomon Ndidi, moved him to a hostel occupied by senior students because he was bed-wetting in the junior hostel where he was earlier assigned to.

Davis also said that he could not report the assault he went through to the school authorities because his abusers who are in Senior Secondary School One (SSI) threatened to kill him if he did.

Read also: Parents of alleged victim of molestation demand N100m from Deeper Life School

Davis also mentioned a teacher in the school, whom he identified as Mr Akpan, whom he claimed used to beat him daily because of his bed-wetting and any minor infraction.

“Mr Akpan used to beat me anytime he saw me. He beat me with anything he sees. He used to beat me because I wet my bed. One day that Mr Akpan was beating me, Mr Michael came to ‘bail me’. Mr. Michael asked if Mr Akpan wanted to kill me and Mr Akpan said he didn’t care,” the pupil said in the Facebook Live narrative.

He said that the same Mr Akpan would send him back to the hostel whenever it was time to eat so that he would starve. He added that the teacher used to beat him with his belt, sticks and stones.

“Mr Akpan sends me to go back to the hostel to get something anytime it was meal time. It’s a way of starving me,” he said, adding that he had to be buying biscuits and soft drinks from a shop in the school to eat.

The boy also mentioned two students whom he said regularly put their fingers inside his anus.

“When I just resumed in school, I was asked to go to Senior Secondary School 1 dormitory. There were two boys there, Ola and Shalom; they used to put their hands in my anus, and brought out faeces from there.

“It made me feel somehow and they used the same hands to beat me. They would ask me to bend over so they could put their hands in my anus. They did it by 12am when everybody was sleeping.

“They told me not to tell anybody or they would kill me, so I never reported it. The housemaster didn’t know they did this; he would be asleep. If I had told the vice principal, they would have killed me.”

The mother who also spoke during the session, said:

“They will remove his boxer and push their legs and hands into his anus. Look at a child I sent to school, he came back with a broken anus.

“People who have children in boarding school don’t know what these children go through. Boarding schools of these days are not like the boarding school of those days”, she lamented.

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