The Deviance and Crime of Defilement of Girl-Child in Nigeria: Causes, Effects and Solutions

Abstract

Girl-child, like her male-child counterpart, is a gift from God and deserves to enjoy the basic rights of life like every human being, in particular, the right to life and the right to dignity of human person notwithstanding her immaturity of the mind and body. However, while the girl-child is still going through her formative stages, she suffers sexual attacks from persons who should offer her protections. Such persons could include her father, persons who are as old as her great grandfather, close relation, neighbours or even total strangers. Apart from being the accepted norm of the Nigerian communities that defilement of girl-child is a deviance and the defiler, a deviant, the conduct has also been criminalised by the two principal penal laws in the country namely, the Criminal Code and the Penal Code. However, notwithstanding these formal and informal control of the deviant behaviour, girl-child continues to experience defilement in the hands of sex criminals. It then becomes necessary to interrogate the motivating factors behind the deviance of defilement of girl-child. Being a behavioural pattern, the paper examines the views of criminologists and criminal justice scholars to situate the possible causes of the deviant behaviour and why it continues to find its way into our daily life.The study adopts doctrinal methodology which reveals the general views of scholars that the deviance of defilement of girl-child could be the result of innate tendencies and societal influence and that it is not enough to criminalise the conduct through penal laws as it is presently the case, the legal framework needs to be complemented by the collective efforts of the government, the parents and the society.