Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode
The Lagos State Government says it is committed to ensuring total eradication of sexual and gender-based violence in the state.
It added that the current administration, led by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, had zero tolerance for perpetrators of such crimes.
The Coordinator, Domestic and Sexual
Violence Response Team, DSVRT, Mrs. Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi, in a
statement on Monday, also urged victims of sexual and gender-based
violence to speak out, saying the government was ready to fight their
battles and ensure that justice was served.
Vivour-Adeniyi
said the government inaugurated the DSVRT in September 2014 as a
response to the increase in incidents of rape, defilement, domestic
violence, child abuse, neglect and maltreatment in the state.
She said, “Governor Ambode had met with
the team and charged members to go all out and increase victim safety
and offender responsibility by providing a cross jurisdictional response
that is uniform in approach in the way sexual and gender-based violence
cases are handled in the state.
“In the past one month alone, the team has attended to about 50 cases in the state.”
Vivour-Adeniyi said about 30 of the
cases were victims of domestic violence, adding that the team was
monitoring over 20 cases, which included child abuse, defilement and
rape with “key evidential medical and police reports.”
She added that the figure was not part
of the total number of cases the Directorate of Public Prosecutions was
prosecuting at the high court.
She said, “In terms of advocacy, DSVRT
has trained over 800 mandated reporters who are government employees
that have dealings with children on how to detect signs of child abuse
and steps to take in reporting such cases.
“Furthermore, over 2,000 schoolchildren
have been empowered through our rape prevention workshops on how to
avoid being victims of sexual abuse and how to preserve evidence when
physically or sexually assaulted,” she said.
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