by Ijeoma Ogwuegbu Uduma

Watching the sexual assault drama play out on Big Brother Naija a few days ago was like watching a masterclass on sexual assault in Nigeria and its effects on victims.

It had all the elements.

It started off with the sexual assault itself. There was a video of it floating around on the Web. A social media uproar raged around it. A young woman was sleeping, and her fellow housemate touched her in a sexual manner without her consent. Open and shut, right?

Of course not.

Kemen, the housemate who did the assaulting, was kicked out of the house and as he was leaving, he set off the next stage of the drama by telling his friends, “I didn’t do anything. We just had a difference of opinion.”

I’m sure there are psychologists who can link his statement to the mindset that made him do what he did in the first place. You touched a sleeping woman without asking her consent and you considered that just ‘a difference of opinion’.

Immediately Kemen made that statement, he set up a dynamic in the house that would be familiar to anyone who has watched a sexual assault situation play out in public before. He told his friends that he was the victim, and pointed out the actual victim as the perpetrator of his downfall.

His friends were happy to pick up the narrative. Spurred on by their previous dislike of her, they trash-talked the victim, TBoss for more than an hour. Even though they had no details of what had actually happened, it didn’t stop them from drawing their conclusions and running with it. Here are some of the highlights of their conversation.

It was her fault – Bisola lamented with tears, asking that if TBoss didn’t like what Kemen was doing to her, why didn’t she move? Follow any sexual assault story and you will hear this line of this defence pop up at some point. Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you do something to stop it? You must have liked it.

The seductress – Tony brought up every single instance he could think of, where Tboss had been remotely friendly or pleasant or intimate with Kemen. From TBoss asking him for a massage the previous week to TBoss previously sleeping in the same bed with him.

All of this to suggest that she had brought it all on herself by seducing him with all her previous contacts with Kemen. Another branch of this thought process is the ‘what were you wearing or what were you doing there’ one. This line of thought is often used to silence victims of sexual assault, again to minimise the perpetrator’s fault, and put more of it at the foot of the victim. You made him do it to you.

She’s ruining Kemen’s life – Instead of reporting the matter, why didn’t she just think about all the great things Kemen plans to do with his life and talk about it with him? This line is often used to stop victims from reporting their assault. Think of his family. You will disgrace him. Nothing about what responsibility Kemen himself had for his own actions.

Why didn’t she tell us? – Another Tony highlight. Why didn’t she tell us when she woke up? Why didn’t she tell us when Big Brother told her? Everything became less about the victim and more about their right to information to convince them of her victimhood.

Based on nothing but Kemen’s parting statement, the housemates viciously isolated and trash-talked TBoss for several hours. I can’t imagine how terrible and alone TBoss must have felt in those few hours. She kept to herself for most of it.

Until Big Brother attempted to give them more information about what had actually happened. To their credit, after getting the information, some of them felt terrible and attempted to make amends by apologising.

The last hold-out was Thin Tall Tony. Even after being given all the information, he still found it impossible to let go of his own desire for TBoss to prove her victimhood to him. “Why didn’t you tell us?” he kept asking. TBoss tried to explain how she felt when the video was played to her. She told him she couldn’t have said anything to them earlier because until she was shown the video, she didn’t know it happened. And when Kemen was kicked out, she felt so much hostility from them that she felt uncomfortable talking to them. And then when she didn’t immediately accept Tony’s half-hearted apology, he took that as more proof that there was more to the story a.k.a she must have done something. He still kept asking why she didn’t tell him. At a point, he suggested Kemen might have been overcome by an ‘evil spirit’. He refused to accept that his friend had in fact done what he was accused of, even though he was told there was video proof.

This says more about the kind of person Tony is than it does anything about TBoss. This is a man who has lied about his family, claiming they are all dead, claimed his daughter was actually his niece, lied that he’s single, even though he’s married with kids. He has told so many lies on the show that one is no longer sure if he himself knows what the truth is. Add his position in this particular instance and it paints a picture of a self-absorbed man completely lacking in empathy or morals.

The reigning viewpoints on the Internet at the moment are a mixture of the talking points the housemates raised. TBoss, the she-devil intent on ruining Kemen’s life, seduced him into losing his cool and getting disqualified. She did this to him. He had no fault in it. She is a liar who actually enjoyed being assaulted. There are even conspiracy theories about how TBoss is supported by ‘big people’ who would do anything to get her to win. A sort of ‘Illuminati of Big Brother’. Anything to absolve the actual perpetrator of his responsibility and crime.

If you’re a reasonable woman who has watched this show for any length of time, you would have seen actions from Kemen towards the girls that would have given you the creeps. He didn’t care much for their personal space. He’s given tips about how to rape a girl. He tried to get Big Brother to give him extra alcohol so he and the other boys could get Gifty drunk and have sex with her (he actually said this).

He has been warned previously for groping one of the girls in a way she didn’t like. Tboss has told him in the past that she didn’t like how he grabbed her whenever they were in bed together.

He was clearly someone with serious issues where women are concerned.

But a lot of people would rather go with the beautiful temptress story line.

There was something that struck me also about how the girls in the house interacted with Kemen in the past. He would often try and put them in compromising situations. You would often see that they were uncomfortable with it.

But rather than warn him sternly or bring it to the attention of the organisers, they would all laugh it off, or try to get away from him without causing a scene. They would jokingly tell him off for being too touchy. But they would still let him come close. They didn’t want to get him in trouble. And then when explaining why she let him sleep in bed with her, TBoss said, “I didn’t want him to feel rejected.”

I see this as a big problem. We’ve spent way too much time, raising men and women to believe that trying to protect a man’s sense of comfort/feelings is more important than creating a safe space for everyone, including ourselves.

To the point where when it is made clear to them that such advances are unwanted, they take it as a sign of the recipient playing hard to get, while preserving their sense of entitlement to a woman’s entire being.

Until we address this particular thought system, this may not be the last sexual assault situation we will see playing out like this.

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 Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Ijeoma is a Film, stage and TV writer. Script editor. She blogs on medium.com