By: Sam Itauma, President/CEO (CRARN),
+2348026693099, info@crarn.net
(June 28, 2011)

The Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network (CRARN) - to meet the needs of over 200 abandoned children. CRARN was set up by a small group of young volunteers in 2003 to shelter 4 children who had been accused of being "witches" and attacked as part of a widespread witch-hunt in their community, which left 120 people dead in the space of 6 weeks. The majority of the children accessing the services at the CRARN children's shelter are orphans of one or both parents.

Typically the surviving parent remarries and the incumbent spouse brands the child as a "witch" or "wizard" and casts them out onto the street. They have often spent much time living on the streets before they discover the shelter. Most children have suffered some severe violations of their right's, either on the streets or at the hands of pastors and parents.

Research by CRARN has highlighted that the belief in child "witches" in Akwa Ibom State cuts across all facets of society - the literate and illiterate, the wealthy and poor, the law enforcement agents, social welfare workers law makers and most specifically the leaders of revivalist Pentecostal churches. Such people believe that a mysterious, spiritual spell is given to a child through food and/or drink.

The child, who eats this spell, is then called out in the night where his soul will leave the body to be initiated in a gathering of witches and wizards. The initiated child will then have the spiritual power to cause widespread destruction, such as murdering innocent people and causing diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, hepatitis, typhoid and cancer.

All accidents, drunkenness, madness, smoking of marijuana, divorce, infertility, and misfortunes are perceived to be the handiwork of these child "witches" and "wizards". It is believed that in recent times, children have become the target for initiation by elderly witches as they are more susceptible to their spells and are quicker in action. This belief is supported and propagated by many pastors in the local churches CRARN strongly feels that the pastors who promote the belief in child "witches" often do so to extract fees for "delivering" the child(ren).

There have been numerous cases of groups of up to 6 children being incarcerated and chained up in churches for months at a time, whilst they undergo horrific exorcisms, which often involved drinking poisonous substances, severe beatings and torture. Parents of the children are told to frequently bring funds needed to carry out such deliverances. Most do so willingly in the hope that they will be able to save their children from the evils of the "witchcraft world".

Widespread violations of children's rights are taking place on a daily basis in Nigeria due to this belief. Experience has shown that suspected "witches" are either abandoned by their parents/guardians, taken to the forest and slaughtered, bathed in acid, burned alive, poisoned to death with a local poison berry, buried alive, drowned or imprisoned and tortured in churches in order to extract a "confession".

The following have been identified as the primary contributory factors to the belief in child witches, abandonment and killings: religious profiteering, poverty, disintegration of extended family structure, ignorance and superstitious beliefs, broken marriages and dysfunctional families. These factors lead to extremely high rates of child abandonment throughout Akwa Ibom State, Cross River State and other parts of Nigeria. There are countless children sleeping in bushes, abandoned buildings or on the street. The majority of these children fit into the 8-14 age range.

However, CRARN have rescued numerous younger children, some as young as three years old. On the streets these children are particularly vulnerable to child traffickers, ritual killers (there have been recorded cases of children being used for body parts in Juju) and rapists. In Oron Local Government area, where the belief in child "witches" is deeply held, there are frequent "disappearances" of abandoned street Children.

The coastal area acts as a hotbed for child prostitution, with many boats travelling along the Gulf of Guinea using this area as a stopping off point. Many of these children are shipped to the Gabon and Equatorial Guinea to work on plantations. At this moment it is unclear how many of them end up in the UK. Oron LGA has also recently witnessed widespread killings of suspected child "witches" with one case involving 14 children being murdered by having hot pokers forced in into their anuses. Numerous other gross violations of child's rights are taking place due to this belief in this area on a daily basis.

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