Amid the public outburst of anger and indignation over the rape and abuse of over a dozen girls by a staff of the More Than Me (MTM) Academy, along with attempts by its founder, Katie Meyler, to cover-up evidence and protect the culprit, Macintosh Johnson (now deceased), the chair of the SHEROES International Forum Liberia, Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor, believes the situation is much bigger than More Than Me. “A tip of the iceberg”, she called it.
Speaking at her Capitol Building office last week, in a prelude to the launch the ‘Jewel Starfish Foundation’ to provide scholarship and other education empowerment for girls across Liberia, VP Taylor said the More Than Me issue mainly highlights problems the country faces to enable the Liberian people to understand how vulnerable girls are in society.
“We must look at it holistically to help us solve the problem our girls are going through in their homes, schools, and offices,” the vice president said. “The issue of protecting girls should be highlighted on the government’s agenda through the Ministries of Gender and Justice.”
Madam Taylor said teachers in various institutions are harassing girls for sex or money because they have refused to study their lessons to make a pass and noted that women and girls are often abused by people they know not by strangers because most abuses are done by men though there are some cases of women.
“When I was growing up we heard about rape rarely but today, every second you hear about babies, girls or women who are raped by people they know,” Madam Taylor said. “It was not like that before. Your cousin would take you out as a little girl and they will make sure you come back home safely to your parents. They became a shield. Why are we where we are today?”
She said the government needs to check up the gender unit to understand how they are addressing issues affecting women and girls in the country.
The vice president said maternal mortality and sexual abuse have become a national epidemic that needs urgent attention from the government.
She said the government needs to begin information awareness in schools and communities “because they are the same boys that grow up and start to abuse their wives and rape girls in the homes, schools, and communities.”
Flossy Tachie-Menson, Co-Founder of the SHEROES Foundation, told the Daily Observer in an interview that if her organization is willing to intervene and assist if requested by the women of Liberia, concerning the girls at the center of the MTM debacle. According to her, the forum’s aim is to help women and girls across Africa solve problems affecting them. She said the MTM issue has not been brought to the forum’s attention and therefore they cannot interfere.
Grand Kru County Senator Peter Coleman, a medical doctor and chairman on the Senate committee on Health, said the current situation involving MTM only shows how vulnerable women and girls are in the various boarding (mission) schools. Coleman said because girls are vulnerable, he will lobby with his colleagues to ensure that the rape law is not amended to make the crime bailable, but that it should require a speedy investigation for alleged rape victims.
