The ICIR’s LUKMAN ABOLADE and IJEOMA OPARA write about how Keren-Happuch died and Keren-Happuch's mother's emotional trauma as she awaits justice in a Police investigation that has taken different turns.

Keren-Happuch mother, Viviene, was left in confusion on Saturday, June 22, when a doctor at the Queens' Hospital in Abuja told her that dead spermatozoa were found in her daughter's urine.

Oliver Amugo, a resident doctor at the Queen’s hospital, also informed her that a broken condom was also found in her 14-year-old daughter who was in the custody of Premier Academy Lugbe as a boarding student.

Two days before that Saturday, she had struggled to retrieve her child from the school after Keren insisted she would love to spend the weekend with her.

On Friday, June 18, Keren had called her mother saying that she had a problem with her eyes and needed to visit a hospital.

When her mother called to inform the matron of the school Grace Salami that she would come to pick up her daughter for an eye check-up, she was told that Keren would be mandated to go through a seven-day COVID-19 isolation upon returning to the school.

“She told me that if I picked Karen from school, they would isolate her for seven days because of COVID-19 protocol, and she would not be going to school or the dining hall.

“So she gave me an alternative of paying five thousand naira to the school account for logistics so the school would bring her to the clinic and take her back. That way, she would not be in isolation,” Vivienne says while narrating her conversation with Salami.

Contrary to the matron’s statement, Keren told her mother that there was no such rule as compulsory isolation.

After the eye check-up, Vivienne asked Keren if she could give money to one of the nurses who brought her from school, but she replied in the negative.

“I asked her if I could give the nurse some money, she said, ‘no, is it not those people that are treating me anyhow?’ “

Vivienne says when she went back to the school, the matron convinced her again not to go home with Keren.

However, on Keren’s insistence and advice of a teacher in the school, she insisted on going home with her child.

“Someone in the school told me to disregard whatever the school management said and come and pick my daughter, because Keren could not even walk to the school on Wednesday, 16th,” she says.

For more than four hours, she was still unable to see her child. When she did, she was made to present her identity card, a situation that had never happened.

When Keren got home, although a cheery and chatty person, she hardly spoke to her mother or anyone at home.

“That day, she was quiet. She did not eat. It was the next day that she woke up and ate. Around 7 pm, she came to ask if she could use my bathroom because if she tried to climb her bathtub, she might fall. I asked what happened, but she said nothing.

“Around 11 pm, she came to me with vomit on her body, so we decided to go to the hospital. She had become weak. When I wanted to dress her up for the hospital, she kept on saying, ‘leave me alone, don’t touch me,’” she says.

Vivienne says when she got to the Queen’s Hospital in Abuja, the doctor observed that there was discharge from Keren’s genitals.

“The discharge kept coming so the doctor (Amugo) removed it and told them to test it, so the doctor called me and said ‘madam, we have tested her urine and that discharge, it is not discharge, it is a condom and her urine has dead spermatozoa,’ ” Vivienne says.

At that point, Keren had become partly unconscious and was still struggling. By midnight the following day, around 2 – 2:30 am, she took her last breath.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/keren-happuch-long-wait-for-justice-bruises-a-mothers-heart/