A social worker and Chief of After Care at the Buea Rehabilitation Institute for the Blind, Mbouehe Manga, is on the run after being accused of raping the visually impaired children at the centre.

Armed police, May 28, stormed the institute located in the Bulu neighbourhood on the outskirts of Buea municipality where parents of the raped visually impaired pupils were wailing.

The police assembled the group of the allegedly raped visually impaired boys between the ages of 7 and 17, in a room for questioning.

According to the minors, Mbouehe has been having carnal knowledge of them since 2014, and has always threatened to kill or expel any of them from school if they dared to tell anybody of his act.

Sylvie Mande Ntone, one of the parents whose child was sexually abused, told The Post that she enrolled her child in the school in 2014 because the child could not talk even at the age of nine. According to her, the child was unusually cold during vacation.

“I thought his mood was influenced by the fact he could not talk, not knowing that some satanic teacher has been sexually abusing my child and he was traumatized. I received a call from my younger sister informing me that she was called from the school that my child and others were constantly being raped by their teacher and the school administration was covering up the crime,” Mande Ntone said.

For his part, Peter Etone, another parent whose son is also a victim of the rape scandal, said, “I personally handed my son to teacher Emmanu thinking that he was my friend, but I didn’t know that he was the devil himself. Since I am based in Tombel, I always encouraged my son to spend the second term holidays with him because of the bad roads.

But I only discovered today that the teacher into whose care I entrusted my child has been sexually abusing him since second term last year. He has been intimidating the child that if he reports the act to anybody, he (Mbouehe Manga) will rent a gun and kill him.”

The person who uncovered Sodomy at the Bulu Blind School and caused the Attorney General to order for the arrest of the Director of the institution is Barrister Mfontem Ozongashu.

According to Barrister Mfontem, he got information from an authority in Yaounde that Mbouehe Manga, who is one of the officials in the institution, was an alleged pedophiliac and Sodomist, “who has taken upon himself the privilege to be raping minors and assaulting the boys who dare to tell anybody about what he has been doing.

“When I got that information, together with a colleague of mine, we came to the school to see if we could identify the said victims. After our findings, we discovered that the allegations were solidly grounded. So we called in the parents of the children and asked for their consent to represent them, since they are mostly minors.

Because of the sufficient evidence, we decided to call in the authorities and filed a criminal complaint against Mbouehe Manga, who is a social worker and Chief of After Care and in whose arms the responsibility of these children rest.

So we got the complaint to the Attorney General, who gave direct instructions to the Commissioner of the Judicial Police to carry out investigation immediately.”

Barrister Mfontem said the pupils told him that Mbouehe Manga had been raping minor boys and as well as the girls. He prayed that the authorities that be to should give the judiciary the independence it deserves so that justice can be served to the children.

Director’s Wife Moots Conspiracy

The wife of Jerome Nkwelle Ewang, Director of the Buea Rehabilitation Institute for the Blind, told reporters that her husband, who is presently in police custody, is not to be blamed for what is happening at the institution.

According to her, when the homosexual scandal came to the fore in 2014, her husband wrote a letter to the Southwest Regional Delegate of Social Affairs, the DO of Buea and the Southwest Governor complaining about the issue. “But his complaint was taken and forwarded to Yaounde and it is still lying on the Minister’s table,” the woman said.

To Mrs. Ewang, the police were not supposed to arrest her husband since he is not the perpetrator of the act. She sees a conspiracy from the lawyer, whom she said was trying to put words in the children’s mouth.

But from information gathered, when the pupils tabled their plight to the Director, he allegedly warned them not to mention it to anybody. Because according to him, all school problems are supposed to be solved at school and not by outsiders.

DO Emissary Ignored

Meanwhile, on May 28, a certain woman surfaced from the school premises claiming to be an emissary from the DO’s Office. She said the DO had instructed her to inform the lawyer to release the Director of the institution, but the lawyer and the forces of law ignored her.

The homosexual scandal at the Buea Rehabilitation Institute for the Blind is coming a few years after the visually impaired took to the streets and mounted road barricades, complaining of inhumane treatment from the school’s authorities.