Kidnapping Saga: The Orekoya children traumatized

Despite the joy that followed the reunification of the kidnapped Ore­koya children-Aderomola, Adedamola and Ademola with the rest of the family, the concerned parents are still scared stiff about

the traumatic effect of the hor­rendous incident on their growing infants. The Ore­koyas said yesterday that their rescued children are not the same again follow­ing their experience in the hands of the kidnappers. For instance, beginning from the hospital where the three children were taken to after rescue, 11-month-old Aderomola has found it difficult allowing people to touch or hold him. He has even become afraid of allowing people get close to him. While the other children were having a hair cut in their compound on Lawanson Road, Thursday morning, Adebisi, mother of the children mentioned in passing that the baby is now scared of people, saying they plan to take them to see a psychol­ogist.

The Orekoyas hired a maid through an online service portal, OLX and within a day of work­ing in the household, the maid disappeared with three children of her boss. The maid who gave her name as Mary Akin­loye resumed on Tuesday and took away three out of the four children entrusted in her care the same day. The eldest son, Michael, went to meet the maid of a neighbour in the building and complained that he could not find his siblings who were taken out by the new maid to buy something shortly after their parents left for work. The boy called her mother and that began the frantic search for the chil­dren. For eight agonizing days, the parents were gripped with grief over what the children were going through in captivity, for instance, what they were eating, drinking or even doing. While pleading for help from the public before the children were found, Adebisi said, “ I don’t know what they are doing to them, I don’t know what they are eating, I don’t know how they are faring and even me, I am dying here. I am going mad, I am going crazy, I can’t think straight.”

At a media chat with the fami­ly, Adeleke, father of the children spoke further on the effect of the experience on them. He said: “ Indeed, we had our wrong and our wrong is that we prioritized work to a large extent over the safety of our assets including our children and as a result, we paid dearly for it. The trauma we went through, you know, it cannot be described. Because there were some other things that came up that we didn’t bother to tell anybody here. We never told you how some scammers tried to scam us as a result of what is going on, pretending to be the kidnappers. We had four in­stances of such. Even last night, a scammer still called claiming that he is still with my children.”

Mrs Orekoya in a private chat mentioned that she was not herself when the kidnappers asked for an exorbitant amount of money. She mentioned that if she needed to do a transaction or needed a loan, she would have spoken to her colleagues who were bankers and not stoop so low to ask for money online. She stated that people said a lot of negative things but she wouldn’t say anything except pray that people would not experience what her family went through. She also said she wanted to blame herself for what happened, but decided against it because she was providing labour. Bisi said she had not thought about getting another maid to work for them.

Meanwhile, attempts to get Adeleke Orekoya to speak on how he intends to help the family overcome the traumatic they faced during the kidnap saga failed.

The children were united with their parents on Tuesday, 14, April 2015 while the kidnapper, whose real name is Funmilayo Adeyemi was caught on the 15, April 2015.

By Sijibomi Oyedepo-Fatayo for The Sun