Bianca Iboma
Her story would easily melt a heart of stone. It is one that reads like fiction, though it is real.
It is the story of a 19-year-old girl who mysteriously disappeared from her guardians in Lagos and was found one year after. But by then, Esther had become a victim of perpetual sexual molestation.
She said she was intermittently bruised and raped for 12 months by those who abducted and kept her in custody against her will. She told the reporter that death was just a few steps away, as she had contemplated taking her own life at different times.
As gathered, the teenager’s ordeal was triggered by the abject poverty that had enveloped her family for long. Her mother, a widow with no reasonable means of livelihood, was all alone raising her five children after their father died many years ago.
While in search of who could relieve her of her heavy burden, Esther’s mother came across the family of Col. Tony Nyiam (rtd). At that point, the woman and her children had become homeless and in urgent need of shelter.
Moved with pity, Col. Nyiam said he agreed to accommodate Esther and her brother. Already, his mother-in-law was also on his neck, pleading that the siblings be accommodated by his family. The mother-in-law then sheltered the widow and her three other children.
Despite being a housemaid, Nyiam said he and his wife, Roselyn, treated Esther like their own daughter. He said he was yet to fathom why she disappeared from their house. But Esther said her disappearance for one year was well beyond her understanding.
The day she mysteriously disappeared
Nyiam said Esther’s sudden disappearance without a trace was still a mystery.
His words: “The last time we saw her was on Christmas Day in 2017. My wife and Esther had left our Lekki home that very day to Ajah. Then my wife sent Esther back home to pick some items for her.
“When she didn’t get back to where my wife was making her hair, we became worried and dashed to every corner along the route and asking everyone about her. We were worried about what might have befallen her.
“The next day, my wife and I went again to check the place and around the vicinity where she made her hair if she would reappear or if we could get any useful information from anyone of her whereabouts. But there was no trace of Esther. We later reported the matter at the police station.
“For months, the search continued with the help of the police and the local vigilance group, but all to no avail.
“My wife became devastated. We didn’t know how to explain Esther’s disappearance to her widowed mother. She was 18 when the incident happened.”
Having exhausted all possible avenues of locating the missing girl, Nyiam said the family had resigned to fate, scared that they were never going to see the girl again.
It was later discovered that the girl couldn’t find her way home, became stranded and sat somewhere. At that point, a man who appeared to be a Good Samaritan approached her with a promise to help Esther locate her family. She jumped at the offer. Little did she know that she would soon become a captive and sex tool in the hands of strangers.
Esther, who hails from Agbor in Delta State, said she saw hell in the hands of those who sexually molested her on different occasions. She also narrated how she was transported to different states and homes for sex slavery.
But providence smiled on her a year after when a couple who lived in the community she was last taken to noticed that all was not well with the young woman.
She said she lost count of the number of men that had sex with her and the number of times while in different places. She said it was as if the spell that was cast on her suddenly disappeared when she summoned the courage to explain her predicament to Mrs. Cindy Samuel, the couple who first noticed how she was maltreated in the hands of her last abductors.
Esther’s narrative
Hear the young lady’s story: “On that Christmas Day, while my madam was plaiting her hair, her customer wanted to buy some cosmetic products that my madam was selling, and I was asked to get them from the house.
“I got home and quickly took the products and headed back to the salon. But I boarded the wrong bus and found myself in one community I was not familiar with.
“I asked people how I could get to the street where we lived in Ajah because I had gone very far, but I could not get help. Also, maybe the way I had pronounced the place might not be clear enough for them to understand. I didn’t see anyone who could help me locate the place so I continued walking.
“After so much effort but no success, I decided to sit on a pavement. I had been walking for hours and I was exhausted. Where I sat, a man approached me. He brought some biscuits and a drink from his bag and handed it over to me. I took the items from him because I was hungry. After drinking it, I became dizzy; I didn’t understand what was going on around anymore.
“Then a woman took me and placed me on a bench and I slept off. When I woke later, it was already dark and the woman offered to take me to her house.
“On arriving at her home, I saw another man in the house, who I believed was the woman’s husband. At night while we were sleeping, the woman’s husband started touching my private parts. I could not scream because the man had already threatened me that he would throw me outside and it was already deep into the night.
“I had to allow the man to touch me because I didn’t want to be thrown out of their house in the middle of that night. And from there, I was no longer myself. I obeyed everything they told me and I didn’t consider running away.
“After staying with them for three weeks, the woman informed me that she was going somewhere to pray and would be away for a week or two. When she left the house, the man continued to rape me perpetually.
“When, the woman returned to the house, I told her my experience with her husband while she was away, but she didn’t say anything. The next morning, she took me to Akwa Ibom Transport Park and bought a ticket for me. She gave the driver details of where I was going and who would receive me there. Still, I could not contemplate running away to a police station or anywhere else.
“When I arrived at the community the woman sent me to in Akwa Ibom, again I was forced into having sex with a total stranger.
“After spending about three months in that community, the woman came to take me back to Lagos.
“When we arrived in Lagos, she relocated me to a makeshift house in Ajegunle, Apapa. She got me a job at a restaurant. At the restaurant, I was paid N500 per day. One particular man was coming to sleep with me and would give the woman a certain amount of money when he was through with me. She would then give me a token from the money.
“When it became unbearable, I spoke to a man who came there to eat to help me. The man accepted and took me to his house one day after I had been beaten at the restaurant by my madam.
“I had to go in search of a job. I was assisting a woman to sell akara (bean cake) and I was given some peanuts for my tedious job. It was there that I met a young man in his early 30s who offered to accommodate me in his house. But the man did not also spare me from sexual abuse.
“I was still assisting the woman to sell akara until one day when a woman made some enquiries about me. She took me to her house. After that, she took me to the hospital because I was not looking okay. She later helped me locate my madam, Mrs. Roselyn Nyiam.”
The rescue
On how she intervened, Mrs. Cindy Samuel said: “Several thoughts ran through my mind when I saw her. Here was a teenager who was supposed to be in school, yet was being enslaved. I felt she might be an orphan or a maid being maltreated.
“I approached her on December 21, 2018. She told me her ordeals and I decided to help her out of her misery but I needed to discuss the issue with my husband. Thank God my husband accepted that we could assist the girl.
“Later on, I spoke with the woman she was assisting after I had discussed with Esther on what she wanted. She said she would love to learn a trade.
“But, just days after I planned to enrol her in a fashion and design outlet, Esther suddenly remembered the telephone number of her boss, Mrs. Roselyn Nyiam. She dictated the number to me. Immediately Esther gave me the number, I contacted the Nyiam family.”
It was joy indescribable when Esther was reunited with the Nyiams, her siblings and her mother.
It was gathered that the police are currently in search of those responsible for Esther’s ordeal.