Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between. 

What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way. 

Sarah*, 26, was a model student at her secondary school, the kind teachers put forward for debates and trusted with prefect positions, until a teacher started harassing her, and the school that was supposed to protect her became one of the most unsafe places she’d ever been. She figured out how to survive it mostly on her own. She’s still figuring out what to do with that. This is what she said.

Tell us who you are

My name is Sarah, I’m 26. I’m a client and marketing manager, Lagos born and bred, still here. When I’m not working, I’m watching movies, listening to music, and hanging out with my friends. I love creating content too, still learning, but I enjoy it.

What made you want to tell this story?

I think I just got tired of carrying it quietly. It’s one of those things that shaped so much of who I became, and most people around me don’t fully know what happened. I thought, why not just say it.

Take me back to secondary school. What were you like?

I was a good student. Like genuinely, I cared about school. I was the kind of person teachers put forward for things like debates and leadership. I was a girls’ hostel prefect. The school’s director, who was a pastor, saw me as this perfect girl and was proud of me for it. I liked being that person. I worked for it. Then everything changed.

When did things start to change?

There was a teacher. I’ll call him Mr D. He started by touching me inappropriately. This wasn’t even the first time something like this had happened to me. He was always caressing my lap. It happened when teachers weren’t around, and the school was quiet. He’d send another student to come and call me, and you can’t disrespect a teacher, so you go. And when I was there, I’d just freeze. I don’t know how to explain it except that I couldn’t move or speak. Like my body just stopped working. It went on like that for a while.

Why didn’t you tell anyone?

Who was I going to tell? All my teachers were male. And I’d seen male teachers dating students in that school, so what were my chances that if I spoke to one of them, they wouldn’t cover for him or make it worse? The person who was supposed to be protecting me was the one doing it. That’s the thing people don’t understand: when the threat is coming from someone with authority over you, there’s nobody to report to. You’re just stuck.

How long did it go on?

I started finding ways to avoid him. If someone came to call me, I’d say I wasn’t there. It worked for a while. Then one day, I was looking for a different teacher. I didn’t see whoever he’d sent to call me, and he found me directly. He tried to finger me right there, and I screamed and ran. After that, I avoided him even harder. He eventually stopped coming to the school. I don’t know what happened, and I was so relieved. Even then, if I saw someone who looked like him, I’d freeze. If his name came up in conversation, my mood would just drop immediately. But at least he wasn’t physically there.

What happened next?

He came back in SS2. I was on the school compound on a Saturday, and lessons were done. Someone told me he’d been there earlier and already left, and I was happy. Then I came out of one of the buildings, and he was just there. I froze on the spot. My friends were asking me why I was standing there looking like that, and I couldn’t explain it.

He said he wanted to apologise. He said he wanted to talk to me privately. And I made a mistake I’ve thought about many times since then. I was very forgiving when I was young, almost to a fault. I always thought the best of people. I always wanted peace, so I went with him to hear what he had to say. We were at the back of the school building, where there was a dry fishing pond. And he grabbed me.

What?

He grabbed me and started touching me. I tried to scream, and he covered my mouth. He pushed me to the ground, tore my shirt, and tried to penetrate me. I was a virgin, and I kept struggling, and eventually my voice got loud enough that he stopped and left. He didn’t get what he wanted, but I was on the ground, shirt torn, crying, shaking. I kept thinking, what did I do for this to happen to me? I felt stupid and angry, and I had nobody to call.

What did you do after he left?

I was screaming. I found a bottle somewhere, and I broke it. I wanted to stab my stomach, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I started cutting my hand with the broken glass instead. Then I went to the hostel to get a knife and went back and stabbed my hand badly. I still have the scar. I was bleeding, and I think that’s when someone found me.

Do you remember what was going through your head in that moment?

I just wanted it to stop. All of it. I didn’t know how to make it stop any other way. I couldn’t run home, there was no means to get there. I couldn’t talk to anyone. I’d been holding all of it alone for so long, and something just broke that day.

What happened after they found you?

They had me write everything down. Every day I’d go and write what happened and how I was feeling. Questions were asked of other students, and it became a big thing around the school. Some teachers became more caring towards me after that. They arrested him. They called me from the hostel to come and see when they did it. And then they let him go.

They let him go?

They let him go. I don’t know the full reason, but my feeling is they didn’t want a scandal for the school. And after everything, he still came back. He’d come around during the holidays because he had a friend who lived near the school, and he’d try to talk to me, tell me he’d changed, try to touch me. It just kept going.

I don’t know how he even got my number, maybe from a friend or a colleague, but he would text me sometimes, just “hi,” trying to start conversations. At some point, I told him very clearly that if he ever contacted me again, I would get boys to beat him up, and I meant it. I told him to stay away from me because I didn’t mind bringing everything back up and getting him arrested again.

And the school director, the one who was so proud of you before, how did he respond to all of this?

That was its own thing. After everything came out, he turned on me completely. Before this, he was proud of me; he was always putting me forward for things. After this, he punished me for everything. If other students did something and got let off, I’d be beaten, flogged, called ashawo, and called useless. He’d do it in front of people on purpose. One time, he called me in front of a parent and just started telling them everything, calling me names, saying I was sleeping with a teacher. I was 13 or 14. I was so angry, I just walked away from them. He called me back and slapped me so hard I couldn’t hear properly for two days. The school was three floors, and people at the top could hear the slap.

He was a pastor. He had all these rules about boys and girls not being seen together. And this is how he treated a child who had been assaulted by a man he employed.

Did you tell your parents any of this?

No. They were barely around, my dad especially. My mum was strict, so it made it hard to open up to her. We only had two or three weeks’ holiday at a time, and even then, how do you summon the courage to say something like that in that window of time to someone you’re scared of? When she eventually heard and asked me why I hadn’t told her, I didn’t have a clean answer. But I also feel like a mother should notice when her child isn’t comfortable. There were signs. I was shutting down, my behaviour was changing. Nobody asked why.

You mentioned this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to you.

No. When I was about five or six, a family member harassed me. I didn’t talk about it then either. When I finally told my mum about it much later, she spoke to that family member directly, which meant I had to deal with that family member asking me if I was sure it happened, if I was still angry at him, basically treating me like I was lying. Even when a prayer pastor was told, nothing was done. So by the time secondary school happened, I already had a blueprint for how this was going to go. You speak, nothing happens, you just have to deal.

How did it start affecting you in ways other people could see?

I became very aggressive, especially towards boys. I slashed a classmate’s face with a blade once in literature class because he touched me. Another time, I tried to stab a classmate with a biro because he was tickling me and being loud with me. I knew what I was doing wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t control it. Any physical contact from a male, and something in me just went. My mood was different; I stopped being the jovial person I used to be. I kept to myself. It was also around this time that I started noticing I had a liking for girls, not romantically, just that being around them felt safer. I don’t fully know how to explain it.

Without therapy, without anyone to talk to, how did you actually get through each day?

Books mostly. Movies. Any time the thoughts would start coming, I’d reach for something to put in my head instead. I read a lot of the Bible during that period, and I cried a lot doing it. It sounds simple, but it was genuinely what kept me functional.

I also wrote a lot. I had a diary then, and I would write everything down. If I couldn’t write during the week, on Saturdays I would replay everything that happened and write it all down. I even had a separate journal where I wrote Bible verses and prayers, asking God to heal me. That process, writing and praying, was how I started to heal gradually.

After secondary school, if anything bad happened to me, I would go back to that trauma mentally. It would feel like a cycle, like a replay. Sometimes I would self-harm again, cutting myself on my legs or hands. Eventually, I just kept praying for healing because it felt like no one else was helping me. Most people around me had already moved on or forgotten, so it was just me trying to find a way out of it.

I’m also someone who physically gets sick when I cry too much, so at some point, I made a decision that I was not going to let myself spiral because my body couldn’t handle it. I would forgive, I would move forward, I would just get on with it. A lot of people would find that hard to believe, but for me, it was survival. Sitting in the pain wasn’t going to save me. Finding an escape was.

What does your relationship with all of this look like now?

I’m okay. I mean that genuinely, not in a brushing it off way. I’ve made peace with most of it.

I don’t know when I stopped repressing certain feelings, but now, when I think about it, I get emotional. Some days I even feel like finding the book I wrote everything in and reading it again, but my mum hid it. Maybe part of me just wants to fully face it, or maybe to finally forget it properly.

My headspace is better than before. I still forgive, but not like I used to. Now I have doubts. I’m more observant, and once I see something, there’s nothing anyone can say to make me trust them again. I just want to be at peace with myself.

I hate rapists so much. I don’t even engage when I see rape cases online because it triggers me. I just avoid it completely.

The parts that still sting are mostly about the people who should have protected me and didn’t, my parents for not noticing, the school for protecting itself instead of me, and the family that questioned me instead of believing me. Those are the parts I still sit with sometimes.

If you could talk to the version of yourself that was on the ground behind that school building, what would you say to her?

I’d tell her it’s not her fault. None of it. Not the trusting someone who said sorry, not the freezing when she should have run, not any of it. She was a child, and she was let down by every adult who was supposed to keep her safe. That’s not something she did wrong.

I’d also tell her that she survived. Even with everything, she survived. She’s not weak. I’ve always been a strong person, and she was strong even then. I’ll never stop being a strong babe, still a friendly person, still a fighter.

What do you want someone reading this to take away?

If you’re in it right now, find your escape, whatever keeps you moving. And know that healing doesn’t have to look like therapy or talking about it until you’re raw. Sometimes it looks like survival first and understanding later. Both are valid. You’re allowed to just get through it however you can.

And if you don’t have help or someone to talk to, the best thing you can do is try to find peace. Find things that bring you happiness, things that help you grow. Find comfort in what you love. Love yourself, love your body, even when you don’t feel good enough.

For me, I became so passionate about the things I loved that I slowly stopped focusing on what happened to me. You can try therapy, you can confide in people you trust, but also know that healing can start in small, personal ways.

I hope you find healing. I still have moments where I want to cry when I think about everything, but I also know now that I’m stronger.

*Names have been changed.

If you or someone you know is struggling with the aftermath of sexual violence, the WARIF helpline is available at 08000 930 000. If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please reach out to Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) at hello@mani.ng