Dear Taiwo,
Please, help me, I believe there is the need for me to act fast before my mother dies of heartache.

I am a regular reader of your column, and I read with dismay, the story of Itunu, which ran for two weeks on this page.

It is a pity the way her mother treated her. It is such a shame, because a good mother is like a precious stone and the best gift God can give to anyone on earth. Anyone who does not have a good mother is very unfortunate.

Her story, however, gave me the encouragement and conviction that I have a duty towards my mother. It woke me from my deep slumber of self-pity and moved me into action. Because she is a rare gem and must not be allowed to suffer the way she is now because of my father’s betrayal. I need a solution to the serious problems going on in our home now and above all, prayers for my mother so that she can take the right decision and live.

I am a final year student in one of Nigeria’s most prestigious universities and I have always known our home to be a place filled with love, joy, laughter and fun until a fateful day, when I overheard my father’s conversation with one of our neighbours over the issue of their housemaid.
My mother, a nurse worked at one of the federal institutions, which often took her away from home on night duties.

Whenever she had to go on night duty, taking care of my siblings became my responsibility. Before this day, I used to wonder why my mother did not employ a housemaid, just like the other families in the neighbourhood where we lived.

We stayed in a building, with four different flats and almost every other family then had a maid.

I was not too young. I was in Junior Secondary School (JSS) Three. I did not grow up to know my father like every other children. My father left my mother to take care of my two siblings and I when we were very young. He left her for overseas to study and work; but he neither communicated nor sent money to us for years. He left when my youngest sibling was just a baby. I grew up with the feeling that he was dead, but my mother always said he was alive and he would come back.

He did, precisely when I was in JSS One. I heard all that happened our father left mum on the pretext of going abroad to study and work. He actually went with another woman, and came back like a prodigal son, when the relationship went sour.

While he was away, mum took care of us single- handed. Family members and friends intervened and dad came back to us. Of course, we all loved the fact that he came back, and that our family became whole again. He had no job, mum became the bread winner.

Trust her, ever hardworking, she never complained. She resolved to doing some extra work so as to make ends meet.

She opened a small chemist shop in our neighbourhood, where she sold drugs and treated people for small ailments. Days before I heard of daddy’s atrocities, my mother called our neighbour’s attention to the fact that something was wrong with Rashidat, her housemaid. I heard mummy telling her to do something about the odour emanating from Rashidat’s body, she replied and told my mother, that she had also noticed and it kept baffling her because she could not fathom what befell rashidat. Mummy promised to look into the cause. but she was unable to do this immediately, because of her shift throughout that week.

Three days after mummy’s discussion with our neighbour, daddy had a visitor. I was supposed to be sleeping after putting my siblings to bed, but I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have made any issue of our neighbours’ visit, if they had not asked daddy if my siblings and I were asleep as we must not hear what they came to discuss with him. When I heard this, I pretended to have slept, especially when daddy came to check on us.

I heard them discussing with daddy, when the couple queried their housemaid, when they percieved that all was not well with her and they stated mummy’s observation too. They however, learnt that my daddy impregnated Rashidat and gave her some drugs to abort the pregnancy. The odour oozing out of her, was as a result of incomplete abortion. However, daddy must act fast before the girl died or something tragic happened to her.

Our neighbour’s wife insisted on telling my mother, but her husband warned her not to as their mission was not to disrupt our home.

They left after daddy promised to get some money so that Rashidat would be taken to the hospital for proper treatment. You would not believe that my mother was the one who eventually took Rashidat to a private hospital after she was told that she was pregnant and took some drugs to abort the pregnancy and that the stench from her was a result of incomplete abortion. At this stage, I wanted to tell my mother all I heard, but my immediate younger brother warned me against doing so because of what it could cost our family. I told him all I overheard when he woke up the following morning.

Dear Taiwo,
My brother advised that I should not tell mum because of how she would feel about it. I want to believe that I should have told her, you won’t believe that she was the one who took Rashidat to the hospital for treatment and she did without collecting a dime from our neighbours. I really did not know if daddy eventually gave them money.

All along, mum was building her own house, we, however, had to move in at a time the place was not really ready because of daddy’s behaviour. I want to believe his idleness contributed to his attitude, because if a man had no job and yet has enough to eat and drink, he was bound to have enough energy to go about chasing women. What I really did not understand is why mummy kept on condoning daddy. Now, despite the fact that she is dying slowly, she has refused to send daddy packing.

Something happened that actually sent us out of where we were living which made us to move into an uncompleted building.

I came home from school one afternoon. There was pandemonium in our apartment. Our landlady,someother women and Rashidat’s boss too were in our apartment. I never knew daddy could stoop so low to impregnate another housemaid. I thought they were discussing Rashidat’s issue, but when I heard what daddy did again, I was ashamed.

The landlady made so much noise that she attracted even outsiders and as dad tried to deny the allegation, Rashidat’s boss kept referring to her maid’s issue and it became a serious issue. Daddy shouldn’t have denied, when he knew he was guilty.

Mummy was on morning duty; my fear was for her not to stumble on the mess, as daddy knew how to clean up his sordid deals before she shows up all the time. Unfortunately, she walked in and witnessed the whole mess. If I were her, I would have kept quiet, but she made the mistake of defending daddy, her defence got Rashidat’s boss so angry that she gave mummy every detail of what happened to her maid and the fact that daddy was responsible for the pregnancy.

She refused to believe until I told her it was true; I did this because I wanted her to stop talking and allow these people to leave our house.

When they had all left, mummy wanted all the details; I told her and my brother confirmed my story when he returned from school.

I really did not know how this issue was settled, but we had to move out of the area to our uncompleted building.

We were there when my mother completed the house and made it habitable. Daddy eventually, decided to go to the school of evangelism; he said he wanted to go into the Lord’s vineyard. We all believed that this decision would make daddy a better person. This, however, did not help because he was asked to leave the school as a result of another sex scandal, can you imagine this?

As if this was not enough, recently daddy was accused of impregnating two female teenage members in our church. One of them is not even as old as I am. Can you imagine this? What can one make out of this? If he wasn’t my father, I would say this was made up, but this is a man who is supposed to be my father. Don’t you think he has a fundamental problem?

My grouse, however is, why has mummy continued to keep up with him? This last one is really killing her; she stopped going to church. She has really changed, and also hardly speaks with any of us.

Couldn’t she ask daddy to leave? Why does she continue to keep up with him at the expense of her happiness? I am yet to find answers to these questions.

Another thing I don’t understand is what daddy’s problem really is? Mummy tries her best to give him whatever he needs despite the role reversal, the poor woman is killing herself to train us, and see how she is being repaid.

Please, how can I help my mother? I don’t want to lose her prematurely, please, help.

Anonymous

In an incident that smack the pinnacle of moral decadence, a Bulawayo couple made their eight-year-old daughter watch them having sex after which she was forced to LICK and SUCK their privates clean.

It is reported that on 8 April, the girl’s mother and step father (names withheld to protect the identity of the minor) were playing ‘adults bedroom game’. During the act, the girl’s mother reportedly called the girl who was watching television in the lounge to the bedroom where the ACTION was taking place. She is alleged to have ordered the girl to watch how THING were done in the adult world.

As per instruction, the hapless soul had no choice but to take heed of the order. The two unruly lovebirds engaged in all sorts of STUNTS, both possible ones and even those believed to be impossible. During the session, the woman is said to have told girl to imitate the GROANS and moans she was making. The little girl could do nothing but to comply.

As the encounter raged on, the couple is reported to have engaged in oral sex with the girl’s eyes firmly glued on the action. After fulfilling their wildest dreams in full glee of their child, the two are reported to have instructed the girl to do unto them what she had just seen. First to go was the girl’s mother who reportedly lay on the bed with her legs WIDE OPEN and told her ‘beloved daughter’ to lick her privates until ‘some fluid that were on it had vanished’.

Having allegedly completed that task as per expectations, next in line was the girl’s step-father who also had his ‘anaconda’ sucked by the 8-year-old innocent mouth, it is alleged.

Holy Spirit Instructed me to Defile her during Prayers, It was the Holy spirit entering her – says Pastor
The matter only came to light recently after a relative spotted the girl exhibiting to her mates her NEWLY ACQUIRED SKILLS. After being questioned, she revealed where she had learnt them from. Her mother and step-father were arrested and were hauled before Western Commonage magistrate, Mr Richard Ramaboea who remanded them in custody to 24 May after they failed to pay $100 bail.

by Dr. Rubel Shelly

A five-year-old girl in Patterson, Georgia, has a rare abnormality. Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) is so rare that a clinic specializing in the disorder has only 35 patients – only 17 of them from the United States.

CIPA is caused by a genetic mutation that obstructs development of the nerves that transmit sensations of pain, heat, and cold to the brain. So Ashlyn Blocker never feels pain.

“Wow! That’s great!” somebody opines. “I wish I was lucky enough to have that ‘disorder.’ I pinched my finger in a zipper yesterday – and it still smarts.”

Not so fast. Have you ever thought of the downside of insensitivity to pain? Ashley had a severely scratched cornea when she was eight months old, but nobody knew anything was wrong until her eye was bloodshot, swollen, and infected. Even the diagnostic tests didn’t phase her. That’s when they discovered something was wrong with her neurological system.

Since then the little girl has burned her hand seriously on a hot pressure washer. Bitten through her tongue while eating. Blistered her mouth on food too hot to eat. A fall, an inflamed appendix, a bladder infection, a splinter – things that would cause you pain enough to know you needed to do something about them could kill Ashlyn. She just doesn’t feel pain.

“Some people would say that’s a good thing. But, no!” says her mother, Tara Blocker. “It’s not. Pain’s there for a reason. It lets your body know something’s wrong and it needs to be fixed. I’d give anything for her to feel pain.”

Ever hear an unbeliever mock the idea of a powerful, loving God who still allows pain and suffering in the world he is supposed to have created? The reasoning goes something like this:Pain is bad, and a loving God would eliminate all pain. So there cannot be a God like the one you Christians worship.

Pain isn’t fun. But pain often serves good purposes. It warns. It protects. It teaches. And it is necessary for our growth and development. The “evil” that is associated with pain comes either when we unjustly inflict it upon one another (e.g., rape, intimidation) or when we react to it poorly (e.g., vengeance, unbelief).

What is true of physical pain is also true of emotional and spiritual pain. Pangs of conscience make us sensitive to one another. They require us to weigh the effects of our deeds on our neighbors. Spiritual pain over our sin and alienation from God is meant to send us to Christ for healing.

Far from being an argument against God’s creative power and redemptive love, pain attests his goodness as a natural alarm to our physical bodies. A motive for caring about one another as persons in community. A reason to seek the One who alone can deal with our
eternal needs.

Pain is there for a reason. A very good reason.

In testimony on Tuesday, Jermaine Cohen, 37, a former member of Mr. Coke’s gang who has cooperated with the authorities, offered vivid testimony about a half-dozen killings. He said that Mr. Coke disappeared into the jail with a power saw, hatchet or gun, and appeared to calmly dispatch those who had stolen from his group, not paid him, or otherwise violated his rules.

Mr. Cohen said he remained outside the jail, but heard what was happening. In the case of one man, he mimicked the sound of a power saw that he observed Mr. Coke take in with him.

“One scream, and then I don’t hear nothing more, sir,” Mr. Cohen told the prosecutor, John T. Zach, who was questioning him.

Mr. Cohen, who wore an orange prison jumpsuit and who is serving a federal sentence for illegal re-entry and other charges, testified that his job was to clean up after his boss. He said that he would wait until Mr. Coke left the jail, often with bloody hands and sneakers, and then he would enter, and find butchered remains and blood on the floor.

Mr. Cohen, who has also pleaded guilty to additional gun and drug charges, admitted that he was hoping for leniency at sentencing in return for his cooperation. Mr. Coke, meanwhile, sat impassively at the defense table, watching as Mr. Cohen testified.

During cross-examination, one of Mr. Coke’s lawyers, Stephen H. Rosen, tried to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility, citing his use of multiple false identities and leaping on inconsistencies in his testimony. “You’ve got a great memory, sir, for things that happened 15, 16, 17 years ago, but you can’t even tell us what you pled guilty to” under a different name in 2009, Mr. Rosen told the witness at one point.

Mr. Rosen said during a break that the judge would give the defense time to investigate and “determine the validity” of Mr. Cohen’s statements.

Mr. Cohen is one of two former high-level members of Mr. Coke’s group, called the Presidential Click, who have been cooperating with the investigation by prosecutors and the Drug Enforcement Administration, the government has said.

On Monday night, prosecutors filed a 26-page statement from a former senior adviser to Mr. Coke, identified only as John Doe, who said he had been a bodyguard and close aide to Mr. Coke’s father, Jim Brown, in the 1980s, when Mr. Brown ran what prosecutors say was the organization that his son, Mr. Coke, eventually took over.

“Over time, I became, in essence, a trusted senior counselor to the organization,” the former adviser wrote. Prosecutors indicated that the former aide would not be called to testify, but said his statement would be used to try to bolster the government’s case at the hearing, which continues on Wednesday.

Although the hearing resembles a minitrial, it differs in significant ways. For one thing, the standard of proof for prosecutors to make their case is much lower than in an actual trial.

Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia law professor and former prosecutor, said that despite the narrow range in which Mr. Coke’s sentence was likely to fall, prosecutors might be trying to do more than just lock in the highest number.

“They may well have their eye on the audience in Jamaica,” he said, “as well as on the particular victims of the crimes beyond those to which he pled. This becomes an authoritative documenting of the extent of Coke’s crimes.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 23, 2012,

‘I saw Dudus kill 4’ – Witness tells of murder, guns and drugs
Defence discredits witness at ‘Dudus’ sentencing hearing
Wednesday, May 23, 2012

NEW YORK, USA — A prosecution witness in the case against former Tivoli Gardens strongman Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke yesterday gave details and damaging evidence of murder, gunrunning and drug-trafficking allegedly carried out at the direction of and by Coke himself.
The witness, who is a former resident of Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens, told an evidentiary hearing here that he was part of Coke’s inner circle which operated a criminal system from Tivoli.
COKE… pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy charges in 2011
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He told the court that the system extended to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and involved the importation of drugs and guns into Jamaica.
The witness also related in detail the murders of a least four persons he claimed he witnessed Coke carry out at a ‘jail’ in Tivoli.
However, under blistering cross-examination by defence attorney Stephen Rosen, the witness admitted that he had lied about a number of issues relevant to his testimony.
Among them was the fact that he has used several different names and false documents as identification to enter the United States illegally. Twice deported from the US, the witness is currently serving a five- to seven-year sentence for his last illegal re-entry into the US. He is also facing a 30-year to life sentence for murder, and for which he is seeking to enter a plea bargain arrangement with US authorities.
The hearing ended abruptly after the witness told the court that prosecutors did not prepare him to testify, nor had they gone over the evidence with him.
“This may be a good time for us to stop,” an obviously surprised Rosen recommended to Judge Robert Patterson.
Speaking outside the courthouse at the end of the day’s proceedings, Rosen and colleague defence attorney Frank Dotadado said they were pleased.
“The witness has been totally discredited,” Rosen said.
Yesterday’s evidentiary hearing came out of an order by Judge Patterson to hear from previously unnamed prosecution witnesses who had painted Coke as a murderous drug lord who ruled the notorious Shower Posse with an iron fist.
Prosecutors are trying to convince judge Patterson that Coke should be given the maximum 23-year prison sentence. However, the prosecution has indicated that they would be willing to settle for an 18-year sentence.
Coke, who was extradited to the US in June 2010 following a month-long manhunt preceded by three days of gunbattles that left more than 70 civilians and one Jamaica Defence Force soldier dead in Tivoli Gardens, pleaded guilty last year to racketeering and conspiracy charges — much lesser charges than for which he was extradited.
The deaths occurred after thugs loyal to Coke engaged police and soldiers who sought to enter a barricaded Tivoli Gardens in May 2010 to serve an arrest warrant on Coke. Coke escaped the dragnet but was captured nearly a month later while being chauffeured into Kingston by firebrand Pastor Al Miller.
He waived his right to an extradition hearing in Jamaica and was flown to the US the following day.
Another witness is expected to take the stand today. The hearing is expected to end tomorrow, after which Coke will either be sentenced or a date set for his sentencing.
— Additional reporting by Harold Bailey
Dudus used high school track team to obtain visas for drug mules — witness
BY HAROLD BAILEY Observer writer
Wednesday, May 23, 2012

THE Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke evidentiary in the US Southern District Court in Manhattan hearing took a bizarre turn today when a second prosecution witness testified that he used a St Catherine-based High School track and field team in a drug trafficking and visa fraud scheme tied to Coke.
Anthony Brown, who said he was an assistant coach at the school in the late 1990’s, said he entered into an agreement with Coke under which Coke would provide several passports which he then presented to the US Embassy in Kingston to obtain visas.
Brown said the visas were obtained on the pretext that the owners of the passports were members of the school’s track team.
He said he was told by Coke that the visas were required as a means of transporting drugs to the US.
During today’s hearing, Coke was in a pensive mood and often interacted with his lawyers. Coke who seemed to have lost weight since his last court appearance in March, watched the proceedings intensely.
Earlier in the morning the first witness in the hearing, Jermaine Cohen, completed his testimony. Despite the best efforts of Coke’s defense team to discredit him, Cohen bravely stuck to his guns and insisted that his testimony was true.
Both Cohen and Brown refused to make eye contact with Coke even though the accused stared straight at them as they gave damning evidence against him.