Hear Her Cries

NIGERIA CASE STUDIES

REBECCA

“They flogged me ― 98 strokes every day. I took ill for two weeks. They took my youngest son Jonathan and threw him into Lake Chad alive, and he was drowned.”

Today Rebecca is receiving trauma counselling ― supported by ACN ― to help heal her memories. Speaking in Hausa, via local priest Fr Gideon Obasogie, she described her two years as a Boko Haram “wife.” Rebecca and her family Áed Baga, near Maiduguri, during an extremist attack in August 2014. She was pregnant and her husband was carrying little Jonathan and leading three-year-old Zachariah by the hand. As Boko Haram gained on them Rebecca begged her husband to leave them, saying they only kidnapped women and children, but killed men. Reluctantly he left. The Àghters arrived soon after and randomly Àred into the bush. Rebecca thought he was dead. Trekking for 28 days, she was forced to wade through Lake Chad, up to her neck in water, to go to the extremists’ camp. Rebecca miscarried on the journey. She was sold to a Boko Haram Àghter and forced to marry him ― but she refused to sleep with him. “I did not give in to him, most nights when he wanted to touch me I would rub the faeces of my children on my body... this always kept him away from me.” As a punishment, she was beaten and Áogged. They also made her dig a hole for three weeks, until she reached water. Then Rebecca fell ill. Her youngest son Jonathan, now three, was thrown into Lake Chad as a further punishment. They then interred her in a pit.

Fr Gideon said: “When she came out of the pit after almost four days, she was very weak and the Boko Haram man forced himself upon her and made her pregnant.” Despairing, she intended to kill herself with an overdose of paracetamol, but a pastor’s wife, who had already two children from an extremist, persuaded her to live. She later gave birth to a boy. Rebecca managed to escape when the Islamists were carrying out raids. Getting permission to visit a cousin in a nearby village (also under Boko Haram control) from the wife of a senior Àghter who had been left in charge, she made a break for it. She walked for over three weeks with her two sons. Eventually they arrived in Diffa, Niger. Army troops ferried them to Maiduguri, where she found her husband was alive ― but believing she was dead, he was preparing to remarry. He called off the wedding, but was distraught because of the new baby fathered by the Boko Haram Àghter. The family was initially looked after in a refugee camp run by Maiduguri Diocese along with 500 other IDPs. In 2021, the family is living outside the camp, but they are still receiving help from the diocese. Rebecca and her husband have renewed their marriage vows and, despite their challenges, they face the future with hope.

28 | HEAR HER CRIES