He spoke at a symposium tagged: “It’s on us to end violence against women and children”, organised by Access Bank’s Financial Control and Strategy Group in collaboration with Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT). The symposium was organised to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and 16 days of activism against gender violence. Guests at the event included Access Bank’s chairperson Mrs Mosun Belo-Olusoga, Group Managing Director (GMD) Dr. Herbert Wigwe, Lagos Attorney-General Adeniji Kazeem, the state’s Solicitor-General Funlola Odunlami and Lagos Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni. Falana accused some religious leaders of trivialising sexual and domestic offences, adding that when such leaders are implicated in such acts, their followers gang up against the victims for daring to make a complaint. He said: “If you report a case of rape, sometimes the community will gang up against you and you are stigmatised for ensuring that the law protects the victim. “If we are going to talk about the law against domestic violence, we must look at our Bible and Quran, religious institutions: they are the greatest promoters of domestic violence. “There’s no way you can run a modern society with what happened in the Old Testament. We have the New Testament because the Old was found to be not adequately relevant.” The Quran, he added, did not support discrimination against women and urged people in authority not to condone such acts. Falana also lamented that female police recruits were still not allowed to marry for the first three years without approval from their Police Commissioner, despite a court declaration banning the practice. Wigwe, in his opening remarks, said victims of such violence were usually reluctant to come forward because of fear. “This forum is long overdue, out duty is to mobilise public participation towards addressing this menace. Our little girls should be trained to dream big. As women, daughters and sisters, they deserve nothing less of us.”]]>