Elvina Ibru, an actress and scriptwriter, has recently revealed that she had once been raped by an armed robber in her home.
Lending some words of advice to rape victims, Ibru said, “You mustn’t be scared of what people are going to say because it is not your fault. I got a lot of snide remarks when I revealed my experience; some people said I was looking for attention. Meanwhile, it is because of talks like that, that many victims don’t report rape incidents. I wish everybody has a strong family like mine because I had people I could lean on. Unfortunately, not everybody has that kind of support system. Nevertheless, they need to find strength within themselves; otherwise, rapists would keep getting away with the dastardly act without any repercussion.”
Speaking on what gave her the confidence to speak up when she did, she said, “I just wanted to help people who had similar experiences. After I shared my experience, many women wrote to me that I had given them the courage to speak out about similar things they had gone through. We, women, have to stick together. But a lot of the time, it is women that even blame the victims. In my case, when I went to the hospital, it was a female doctor that asked me what I was wearing when the rape took place. That was preposterous because it didn’t matter what I wore because I was in my house. So far, a woman doesn’t give her consent for sex, that is rape.”
On what she would do if she came face-to-face with her rapist, Ibru said, “I have actually dreamt about him a lot. Even if he stands among 100 people, I can pick him out. I believe in God and I am sure that He loves me. I don’t think there is anything that happens to me that is not for a good reason. You may call it a psychological way of dealing with the incident but the way I look at it is that the rapist needed to be saved and I was the sacrifice that God used to save him. I am sure that before that time, he had never touched someone like me before. He was a street boy and was mostly used to a rough life. I believe that maybe the day he touched me, he went home and thought about his life, and felt that if he continued living that type of life, he might never be able to touch a woman like me again. I imagine that he might have become a pastor now and is no longer a menace to society. Perhaps, if he sees me, he would say that he had been looking for me to beg for forgiveness. And I would tell him that I had forgiven him. I want to believe that God used me to change his life because that incident couldn’t have happened to me for no reason. If that incident did not happen, he may have been killed by the police or his fellow armed robbers.”
