On the nights of the encounters, he first invites the girl for dinner. The meal is always buffet style with foods ranging from bush meat, goat meat, to shrimp and other sea foods. By just the sheer number of the different dishes and desserts, one can be forgiven for thinking a big house party is about to begin – not food for just one person, Yahya Jammeh.
Once dinner is over, he then leads her into a master bedroom located by the kitchen on one side and son, Muhammed Jammeh’s room on the other. In this room is a bathroom, a white mattress and a white couch.Unopened boxes of unknown stuff litter the place making it a little smaller. Particular care it seems was deliberately made to be sure everything in the room is of white color. Walking in, despite all the stuff around, one almost feels like entering an empty space.
Once he settles in the room with the victim, he then proceeds to insert his fingers inside her in an effort to according to him, check whether she underwent Female Genital Mutilation and whether she is also a virgin. He tells the girls he likes them uncircumcised and virgins. It must at this point be noted that Jammeh has made his support for FGM well known in the country and even tried to prosecute prominent anti-FGM forces like Dr. Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho on false charges. This practice therefore attests to his hypocrisy that has become all too common.
He then proceeds to rub the girl going in an up and down motion while he asks her whether she likes it or not. These are very young girls and by this time she is trembling like a slaughtered chicken, fear overcoming her entire body system. The answer to such a question obviously cannot be a “no”, for after all, this is the most brutal leader the African continent has ever seen. One of the girls confided in Faturadio that she once made a desperate attempt to push his hand away, but when he insisted that she was bluffing and that she loves it, she gave up the fight and let the abuse continue.
Whether performing rituals lie at the heart of reasons for President Jammeh’s sexual abuse of young Gambians girls is yet to be determined but the revelations coming from the victims point to superstitious believes too. The fact that everything in this room is white, even the furniture is white, and according to all the girls, he dresses them in white before performing the actual sex act with them seem to suggest there is more to the whole affair than one just satisfying his pedophilia desires.
The sad truth is that none of the girls who continue to be abused by Yahya wants to be in that situation but they all feel helpless. Faturadio, in collaboration with the wider Gambian Diaspora, will continue to reach out to human rights groups and the International Community to highlight the plight of these innocent victims who should be going to school rather than serving as someone’s sex slaves. This quote from one of the girls says it all: “I get so scared seeing a man I saw in white Kaftans throwing biscuits at us when we were young, now sleeping with me. This may sound funny, but I get even more scared when he takes his hat off”.
