ADAM Farouk, an Islamic cleric who is clearly a charlatan, has been sentenced to eight life sentences for molesting and sexually assaulting eight students. The cleric was sentenced last Tuesday by an Ikeja court for sexual crimes and domestic violence for defiling the students aged between six and 11 in his class. The victims were under the supervision of the cleric to receive education, especially religious and moral teachings. However, the insidious and perverted teacher not only succeeded in instilling in his students the desired faith-based education and moral values, but also set an example diametrically opposed to decency and sanity. It was a clear case of criminal breach of trust. He was charged with moral and religious education of his students, but he chose to sexually violate them. The parents of the victims were greatly disappointed to discover that someone they had trusted and hoped would help shape their children’s lives morally and religiously turned in fact to defile them. Nevertheless, it is reassuring that the perpetrator is already paying for his crime and treason at a correctional center in Lagos State, where he is currently serving several life sentences.
There must be something mentally wrong with adults engaging in the deviant behavior of raping children or even any other form of sexual assault. For example, it is hard to imagine what kind of sexual pleasure a grown man hoped to get from children aged six to eleven, assuming the students were even able and actually consented to the horrendous sexual act. This kind of criminal and morally reprehensible act smacks of insanity. The present case is particularly disturbing because a stakeholder burdened with the responsibility of leading others in the path of decency and moral rectitude has been at the center of blatant perversion. But the truth is that this is not the worst case reported as there has been a preponderance of cases of sexual violence and abuse, even of the incestuous variety. All this demonstrates the level of decadence and degeneration that has crept into the social value system and wreaked havoc on the social fabric.
This sordid state of affairs is saddening and concerning as the population of responsible and trustworthy adults who can be relied upon to help young people form the right type of character and instill moral values that enhance their chances of growing up as responsible rather than of damaged adults seem to thin out. Perhaps it should be mentioned that there are still dozens of ‘Farouks’ in the system who have no qualms about criminally betraying parental trust and violating the innocence and integrity of children by subjecting them to sexual predation . Society should be alarmed at the level of depravity people are descending into. It is a reflection of the loss of values and morality and society needs to work to restore healthy and respectful attitudes towards values and morality. That is the only way it can assure itself of a functional future, since a society without values and morality is doomed to end up in oblivion.
The Lagos State Government, through the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary, must be doing something right as the conviction rate of criminals committing child and sexual abuse offenses in the state has been quite impressive recently. And we commend their strategy to the other subnationals in this regard. We are not aware of any higher penalty that the court could have imposed for the animal behavior in this case. We therefore commend Justice Abiola Soladoye’s courage in imposing the maximum sentence under the law on the brutal felon and we hope that the successful apprehension, prosecution, conviction and imposition of the far-reaching sentence will discourage other would-be sex offenders. predators and pedophiles of the criminal enterprise.
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