Bishop Samuel Borbor
By Bampia James Bundu
The bishop of the Freedom in Christ Ministry on Fergusson Street in Freetown has confirmed as true allegations that he threw his 14-year-old twins on suspicion that they are demon-possessed.
Bishop Samuel Borbor told Politico at their residence at Hill Station, where the kids used to live with their stepmother, that he had to send them out of his house to Kenema to stay with his cousin, a pastor.
“We are convinced that the children are in fact involved in some kind of witchcraft,” he said, as his wife looked on.
The Bishop said he supported the kids while they lived in Kenema with his mother, their grandmother, but that because "they troubled the old woman" he had to take them to his cousin Pastor Saffa.
When contacted, the cousin, Pastor Timothy Saffa of the Christ Life Ministry in Kenema, said that for the past three years he’d done all he could to take "good care" of the children but that they continued to be difficult.
He however expressed disgust at the "wickedness" of Bishop Borbor whom he accused of abandoning his own kids and shirking his responsibility as a father and "as a man of God".
“Bishop Borbor hates his children. He neither wants to see them nor come close to them. He has abandoned them here without taking care of them,” Pastor Timothy grumbled.
He added that he had already reported the matter to the ministry of social welfare, gender and children’s affairs in Kenema for their intervention.
“I am tired. I have my own kids to take care of. I have enrolled the kids in school but I cannot continue like that. I don’t have the resources to take care of them again,” he said, adding that since the mother of the twins, Patricia Npana, died in 2009 and the Bishop married another wife, everything went berserk.
He called on the ministry of children’s affairs to challenge the Bishop and force him to take care of his children.
But Bishop Borbor said he took the kids to Kenema to live with their uncle “because I can no longer live under the same roof with these kids. They are possessed with witchcraft and have been blocking my way all this while, stealing from my wife”. He said his wife had done all she could to make the kids better but it didn’t work out.
“I know that it is wrong for a good Christian to have kids out of wedlock. I tried to propose to her [the late woman] but it did not work out”, he said, adding that it was unfortunate he couldn’t marry the mother of his kids with whom he spent 35 years.
With the permission of the uncle one of the estranged kids, Juan, told Politico with his uncle’s permission and phone that all they wanted to do was pay their uncle back for all the support he had given them.
“I don’t want to go to my father’s house again. Our stepmother hates us and accuses us of witchcraft. We are not possessed and my brother is not a thief. We are twins who want to be educated like other kids”, she said, adding that they were chased out of their father’s house by their stepmother.
She said they had to sell vegetables to survive in Kenema because their uncle did not have money enough to take care of them.
“Our father claims to be a man of God and he is treating us like this and calling us witch”, she said.
Meanwhile, the acting principal social development officer in the ministry of children’s affairs in Kenema, James Bundu said they were presently investigating the matter to ascertain what went wrong and to confirm whether Bishop Borbor was the true father of the twins.
He said they would invite the Bishop, whom he said had refused to pick his calls so far, to resolve the matter.
(C) Politico 14/01/14
