Juliana Francis
A multiple international award winner, Ruona J. Meyer, has urged women to be careful about sharing child pornographic videos.
Meyer, who is the first Nigerian journalist to be nominated for an International Emmy Award, recently took to her Facebook wall to urge women to be cautious. She explained that women gleefully share children’s pornographic videos, without knowing the consequences, then attributing the sharing to creating awareness was one of the reasons she left a WhatsApp group.
The took to her Facebook wall to post this warning following the hysteria and video sharing of a 10 years old Chrisland School student and a 13 years old boy, also from the same school, who engaged in sexual activities.
The incident was said to have happened in the hotel, where the students, who went to Dubai for school games lodged. Reports further claimed that the game, ‘Truth or Dare’ led to the sexual act.
One of the students, who witnessed the sexual act between the girl and boy filmed it and it was later shared on different social media platforms. The video, understandably caused an outrage, with the Lagos State Police Command vowing to find out the first that distributed the video.
Meyer said: “Telling almost-40-year-old women why it was abominable to share child porn is why I left my High School WhatsApp group years ago. It all started because…I had one of these Samsung phones that automatically send all photos, and videos into the gallery. Spent all day interviewing a source and asked them to send me pictures. I go to my gallery to check, and the screenshot is an adult raping a child. Both Caucasian. I got really, angry and deleted it immediately. Because of their prior antecedents, I knew where to go. Tortoise nor dey ever comot tori! I enter the WhatsApp group of the FGGC Sagamu 98 set. Ladies, what the hell is this? Who shared this? Why! Some idiots promptly turned up to say it was for awareness purposes, to warn mothers… in fact, scrolling through you could see them pleading for the blood of Jesus…Those with kids saying shit like “we mothers have to be careful…”
“It all made me angrier. I said do you realise you have just distributed porn? Is this the only way to raise awareness? What if it were your kids in the video? Would you want their faces shown all over the world? What hurt me most was – when I told them these things were crimes, put up some news stories of convictions to illustrate, and reminded them that some of them who lived abroad and were saying “calm down,” needed to stop being so weird… they said I was overreacting. Yes. Adults o! That’s when I remembered this is the same group where people shared Toke Makinwa’s book before it was released. Yep! Rather than pay $10, a few grown women pirated another woman’s sweat! That time they also said I was overreacting too! Na so I ask myself: OluwaRuona, what did you expect? Now, though this was not the consensus of all the women in that group – many of whom I still love – I realised I had to draw the line at the distribution of child porn. And today, here we are. Adults share videos of children having sex in the name of awareness. Listen…If you ask for or share videos of innocent children being abused and meting abuse – particularly of a sexual nature: You are NOT raising any awareness. You are at least a voyeur and at most a pervert. In a civilised country, you and your ‘detty’ WhatsApp phone will be in jail.”
Responding to the post, Jennifer Chioma Owolabi, said: “Did the same in a WhatsApp group that is supposed to be a women-only charity group, same “awareness” video was sent to the group to warn mothers. I vehemently told her to delete but others came for me explaining why it was necessary to share the porn video involving a child. I rushed to Google to get screenshots of people who got into trouble abroad because this sort of thing was found on their phones, showed them all the screenshots, I even threatened to report the group. Anyway, the admin sent a private message begging me to let go that the issue was causing heated arguments in the group. I let it slide but a week after I exited the group. I just wasn’t feeling the group anymore after that incident.”
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