Virginity Test Controversy: If my clients forced the students, I won't absolve him

Thisday June 21 2003

Online Reference:

http://www.thisdayonline.com/archive/2003/06/21/20030621cov.03.html


Weekend Vanguard June 21 2003 p.14

Virginity Test Controversy:
Lawyer: If my client forced the students, I won’t absolve him

Barrister Adesina Ogunlana is the lawyer of the controversial virginity test doctor. Right from the faculty of Law of the Lagos State University, Ojo from where he finished with this reporter, he had been an activist. Thus he was acting true to type when Ogunlana within the premises of the Lagos High Court introduced Dr. Charles Oriaku, the man at the centre of the controversy, as his client.

As the lawyer to the doctor involved in the virginity test case, what is the entire issue about?

The entire issue is all about a possible breach of fundamental human rights, a possible breach of medical ethics. To me, these are the essential issues aside the noise, aside the sensation.

Forget the fact that you are a lawyer. As a father, would you allow without your consent your child to be subjected to that kind of treatment?

What type of treatment please?

Physical examination without your consent?

The question you have asked me in itself is not difficult, not only physical examination, there are so many things that ordinarily as a parent, I would like to be informed of when it comes to my children. Now, in this particular case of a medical examination, I would expect the school authorities to have discussed with me and seek my consent in all ramifications or clarification. I would give my consent if I believe that I know the quality of the doctor they want to use and the extent of what they want to do. If it were to be something like surgery, ordinarily I will have to be there myself and not that the school will have to take permission from me.

But when we look at these cases in context again, you will find out that teachers stand in the position of parents to their students and…

(Cuts in): When we talk about the issue of loco parentis, does it relate to boarding students or non residential students?

With due respect to you, except your own understanding of loco parentis means it is only when there is a boarding school that the parents or teachers or the owner of the school would stand in loco parentis to their children! All my years of education including up to the university in LASU (Lagos State University) and it is non boarding, in fact the authorities tell us that the Vice Chancellor, the dean, all these people even though we are adults, they are in loco parentis. Really, it will not matter to me whether it is as boarding school or not. When you look at it in context, should consent be gotten? The answer is yes, consent of the parents should be gotten and that is very clear.

But what we are now talking about is where the doctor was invited to come and do an examination, not that he imposed himself on the school. And he took pains to ask the owner of the school authority questions pertaining to the physical examination as to whether their parents were aware, then he took necessary precautions. Remember he is not going to do surgery, he’s not going to do operation or analyses on the students. If he had taken the pains and indeed they assured him that the parents were not only aware of it, they even paid for it, I’m talking of my client, in that case, it could be right to assume that the school authority had done the proper thing and stood in respect of that student and their parents. It’s a different thing if the doctor is a peddler and he entered and cajoled the school into conducting the examination. That would have been a different ball game altogether.

As a lawyer who believes that things should be done the legal and normal way, would you allow your kid to be subjected to a medical examination in a computer room?

Why not? Let me tell you something. I think the problem is that we are Africans, we are third world people and so we ordinarily exaggerate or mystify things. What is examination for goodness sake? Remove your clothes, feel the pulse, check the eyelid, check if there is any epidemic deformation on the body.

With the aid of the computer or manual method?

I think you are unnecessarily trying to sensationalise this matter. When they say computer room, was it not on a table? What a doctor needs for examination is privacy and if he is a female and the doctor is a male, all you do is to have chaperons. Two of the chaperons were there. Nobody was forced.like told you before, ija lode lorin dowe (we can now speak proverbially because there is a quarrel). Do you want the school to take them to the best hospitals before they could be examined? What is there in an examination for you to make a fuss at the fact that the student were examined not in the dark.

But done nakedly…

Of course. Another thing I want to tell you is that journalists are expected to be one of the enlightened people and the man I am talking about is a medical doctor. What is a carcass to a butcher? What is an aisle to a mechanic? What is a human body to a doctor for goodness sake? The man is a doctor.

There are two things which the doctor had told you to my hearing. He was invited, he sought clarification and he got it.

Was it formally or informally?

Does the formality or informality of an invitation vitiate the issue of consent? More importantly, the man was invited and he did not force any of the students in the course of the examination. The whole brouhaha is only on a single girl. After this test, the doctor gave lecture to the students and distributed the paper to them and they were all happy. My client is only suffering from holding the short end of the stick. Before now, nobody including the media had sought clarification from him.

By the time we finished yesterday (Wednesday) with the police and the House of Assembly, all the imaginative charges against him were dropped. They now know that he is not a quack doctor, that he is not a rapist, that he is not a ritualist. The only one is the issue that the school did not inform the parents; if the school did not tell the parents, I am not absolving the school. I will not absolve the school. If my client forced the students, I will not absolve him.