mirabel lied?

still...

i need to address something and i'm going to be completely honest about it even though it's really uncomfortable.

the first case i wrote about in my last post, the one about the girl who was allegedly stalked and assaulted, mirabel. there are things that aren't sitting right with me and probably you too.

first, the sniper part keeps bothering me, she said she drank sniper to end her life after the assault and her friend rushed her to a hospital in ibafo, and she survived, and not only did she survive but she was making tiktok videos in the hospital and posting on tiktok within days.

and i don't think most people really understand what sniper actually does to the body, sniper is organophosphate pesticide, when you ingest it your body starts shutting down systematically, it attacks your nervous system, you start having seizures, respiratory failure, your heart rate becomes erratic, you foam at the mouth, you lose control of bodily functions, it's not like drinking kerosene where they force down palm oil down your throat evwn that’s a wrong thing to do, it's violent and it's painful and it requires immediate intensive care.

for someone to survive sniper ingestion they need to be in a properly equipped healthcare facility, i’m talking ventilators, atropine injections, pralidoxime, continuous monitoring, sometimes dialysis, this is not the kind of thing you survive in a basic hospital and then casually make videos the next day, the recovery period alone for sniper poisoning is weeks if you're lucky, not days, and definitely not while you're posting content online.

so that part alone made me pause and wonder about the logistics of surviving something that deadly in what looked like a fairly basic facility and being well enough to create content almost immediately.

then there's the thing about how he allegedly found her, she said he'd seen her twice, she refused to talk to him both times, he was so obsessed that he paid area boys to block bikes from entering her street just so she'd be stranded and he could approach her, she still refused to give him her number.

now think about that level of obsession, that level of premeditation, someone willing to go that far, willing to pay people, willing to orchestrate circumstances just for the chance to talk to her, and yet somehow he never once tried to contact her on social media before the assault, never sent a dm on tiktok, never tried instagram, never tried any of the ways obsessed people typically try to reach someone in this digital age.

but then after he allegedly raped her, suddenly he has her tiktok account, suddenly he's able to send her that long message there, so he knew how to find her online the whole time but chose not to use it until after the assault, does that make sense? if someone is obsessed enough to track down your physical address and break into your home, wouldn't they have already exhausted all digital avenues first, isn't that how obsession typically works? you start online and escalate to physical, not the other way around.

and then i started thinking about the details she shared about the actual assault, she said he used a blade to cut her to make it look like her first time, to make her bleed, and she didn't realize she'd been cut until she saw his message later, she thought it was her period

and i kept thinking about how you could be cut with a blade in one of the most sensitive parts of your body and not immediately know, not feel the specific kind of pain that comes from a laceration versus menstrual cramping, not notice the amount of blood, because a cut from a blade doesn't bleed the same way a period does, it's continuous, more immediate, and a different sensation entirely

she also said she was cut but then wore jeans tight enough to be given a piggyback ride, and anyone who has ever had any kind of injury or sensitivity in that area knows that tight clothing is the last thing you can tolerate, even sitting becomes difficult, movement too is painful, but she was wearing jeans and being carried on someone's back.

the medical details kept not adding up either, she said a nurse told her she couldn't be stitched because she was too young, and i don't know what medical training would lead to that conclusion, stitches aren't about age, they're about wound severity, you stitch lacerations that need stitching regardless of the patient's age, that's basic wound care. my docs, innit?

she also mentioned being told to sit in hot water, and i kept thinking about how sitting in hot water with an open wound, especially in that area, is not standard medical advice, warm baths might be recommended for some things but not fresh lacerations, not cuts that would presumably still be bleeding or at risk of infection.

and then there's the writing style thing that people pointed out, the way she writes and the way her alleged rapist writes are remarkably similar, same cadence, same phrasing, same errors, and while that could be coincidence it's the kind of coincidence that makes you doubt.

there's no medical report, and when people asked about it, even when VDM asked directly, her response was about drinking sniper, not about the assault itself, deflecting to a different trauma instead of providing documentation of the primary claim.

her neighbors allegedly saw her leaving the compound in jeans, walking normally, but her story was that her friend picked her up, two different accounts of the same timeline, and i don't know which one is true but they can't both be.

the videos she made with her friends, people are saying their facial expressions don't match the gravity of what allegedly happened, they look like they're holding back laughter rather than supporting someone through trauma, and body language isn't definitive evidence but it's another thing that doesn't quite fit.

and maybe the thing that bothers me most is that she was posting "dm for adverts" within days of allegedly being assaulted, allegedly attempting suicide, allegedly being hospitalized, and i don't want to police how trauma survivors should behave because everyone processes differently, but the timeline from assault to advertising feels jarring in a way i can't quite reconcile for real.

none of this is me saying definitively that she lied, i'm not a detective, i wasn't there, i don't have access to all the information, but these are thoughts i'm having, inconsistencies that are making me deeply uncomfortable about the story i amplified.

and when you line all of that up together, when you look at the cumulative weight of things that don't quite make sense, it becomes harder to ignore.

and i'm angry about that for multiple reasons first, if this was a lie, if she fabricated this story for attention or clout or whatever reason people do these things, she has done incredible damage to every single woman who has actually been assaulted and is scared to come forward because they know people won't believe them.

false accusations, and i need to be very clear about this, false accusations hurt real victims more than anything else, they give ammunition to every person who wants to dismiss women's experiences, they make it harder for actual survivors to be taken seriously, they feed into the narrative that women lie about rape for attention.

and that makes me sick because the reality is that false accusations are rare, statistically rare, but when they happen they're loud and they're damaging and they give cover to actual predators.

so if this story was fabricated, i'm furious about it, imagine the harm it causes to real survivors, think about the credibility it takes away from actual cases, we all know how it will be used against women who are telling the truth.

but still, even if this specific case turns out to be false, it does not erase the reality of rape culture in nigeria, it does not erase the femicide crisis we are facing, it does not erase the fact that women are genuinely afraid to enter buses full of men, it does not erase the second case i wrote about, the modeling scam case with shawny wright, which is very real and very documented and still needs justice.

one false story does not invalidate the thousands of true ones. one person lying does not mean we stop believing survivors. one fabricated case does not mean we stop talking about the systemic problem.

and this is the difficult balance we have to hold, we have to believe women when they come forward because the alternative, the world where we default to skepticism, is a world where actual predators walk free and actual victims suffer in silence.

but we also have to verify, we have to look at evidence, we have to be willing to acknowledge when something doesn't add up, because believing women doesn't mean turning off our critical thinking, it means taking accusations seriously enough to investigate properly.

and i failed at that, i took this story at face value because it fit the pattern of things i know happen, because it sounded like countless other real cases, because i was angry and wanted to amplify what i thought was another victim's voice.

these things don't add up and we have to be honest about that. and if this was a lie, if someone really did fabricate a rape accusation for attention, then that person needs to face consequences, real consequences, because this is not a game, this is not content, this is people's lives, this is every real survivor's credibility, this is serious.

but while we're holding this person accountable if the story is false, we cannot let this become ammunition to dismiss all accusations, we cannot let this turn into "see, women lie about rape all the time" because they don't, statistically they don't, this would be an outlier not the norm.

the modeling case is still real, the petition still needs signatures, shawny wright still needs to face justice, the femicide crisis is still happening, women are still being assaulted and killed at alarming rates, the fear women feel is still valid and based on real experiences.

so here's what i told myself, verify before amplifying, believe survivors but also look at evidence, hold people accountable when they lie but don't use one lie to dismiss all truth, stay angry about the real problem while being honest about the cases that don't hold up.

this is a hard lesson for me about not spreading stories without verification, about how empathy needs to be paired with discernment, about how believing women and critical thinking are not opposites, they work together.