The Child’s Right And Rehabilitation Network, CRARN, Akwa Ibom State Chapter, has rescued four female children who were abandoned after being branded witches by their parents.
The siblings, whose origins are yet to be known, were rescued in the wee hours of Wednesday around the new bridge at Abak area of the state.
According to the leader of the CRARN, Itoro Akpan, the children’s parents abandoned them in a prayer house where they were taken to for deliverance.
The children have reportedly been abandoned for years without their parents bringing food to them or catering for them. Their parents were said to have branded them as witches after ‘revelations’ from ‘prayer houses’.
The CRARN on its Facebook page, shared the photos of the children, saying, “They were told in a prayer house that they were witches, an allegation which compelled their parent to to abandon them.
“Their parents later came to the church at the instance of the pastor, picked them and put in a waiting car which drove them to the Abak bridge and dropped them there.
“One of the children said, ‘My father said he’s afraid of God, he would have killed us as instructed by the prophets, so he decided to drop us off at the new bridge, saying we should die if we want, that he won’t kill us himself.’
“The children were malnourished and seen with wounds, bruises, and scars in different parts of their body indicative of variant degrees of torture, which of course are not uncommon with children who suffer similar faith consequent upon witchcraft stigmatization.”
The right activist group decried that children have continued to be abandoned in the state over witchcraft allegation by parents after desperate and nouveau riche pastors and prophets label witches/wizards and made their parents force them on the streets if not killed.
“These children were lucky to be rescued, otherwise, they would have been picked by the lurking human traffickers or ritual killers who maraud the streets in search of children for diabolic purposes.
Recall that in July, the police arrested a pastor, Francis Taiwo, at the Key of Joy Celestial Church, Ajibawo, Atan-Ota town of Ogun State who chained his 9-year-old son for weeks.
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