The Executive Secretary of the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency, Titilola VivourAdeniyi said the state government has adopted a two-prong approach to addressing the menace of SGBV, which include prevention and providing immediate support to survivors. While admitting that the state records more than 300 reported SGBV cases monthly, Vivour-Adeniyi said the agency is providing medical, legal, psychosocial, counselling, rescue and sometimes, empowerment to SGBV survivors. She added, “Since, September 2023, we’ve noticed that we attend to an average of 300 new clients monthly for SGBV, and domestic and sexual violence for all gendermen, women, boys and girls.
“Now, the domestic and sexual violence agency is the statutory agency set up by the state government to prevent and ensure holistic response is provided to incidents of sexual and gender-based violence. “What we do, in essence, is adopt a twoformed approach. “In the unfortunate instance that the case has happened, we ensure that the whole referral pathway is activated.
What that means is survivors, as you would appreciate, require multi-disciplinary and various services. They require medical, legal, psychosocial, counselling, rescue sometimes, empowerment, and of course, access to justice. “In the cases of rape, and sexual violence; they need to make sure they access medical attention, ensure the case is represented as a dissertation, and then get a survivor advocate to accompany the survivor to en.