In 2003 Mr. Itauma rescued four children from the hands of witch-hunters who dragged them to be killed in the nearby bush close to a market where he lives, because the local sellers believed the children were responsible for their poor sells of goods. He kept the children in his family home for safety while working to reconcile them with their families.

A week later, three orphans who were siblings also arrived at the market to beg for food. They were attacked and tortured but lucky that a woman led them to Sam’s family house where other ‘witch’ children were taking refuge. As the children kept trickling in, as a result of witchcraft stigma and torture, Sam approached the government in 2003 to take the children and keep them in the government centre. He was told that such children cannot be allowed to mix with normal children. He, therefore, decided to open a place for the abandoned stigmatized children in his hometown; with the help of The Catholic Church and Latter-Day Saint Charities. That was the beginning of CRARN Children Centre. He later added a school called CRARN Academy. His organization, CRARN, continued to rescue the ‘witch’ abandoned children from the street who were lucky to be alive, as he led the campaign and advocacy to stop the phenomenon. By 2008, rescued children in the CRARN Centre were already gearing up to 300 in number.

Mr. Itauma’s campaign received a boost from the United Nation Children Fund (UNICEF) and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Person and related matters (NAPTIP) a Nigerian Federal Government agency to facilitate the anti-witch-hunt campaign. A research report done by UNICEF in partnership with CRARN indicates that some religious preachers make a lot of money from deliberately labeling children as witches and wizards with claims of having powers to exorcise them of witchcraft spell while fleecing their parents of their hard earned money. This assertion is confirmed by the UK Observer report of December, 2007 investigative report:

“Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities…” The report added that:

“Sam Ikpe Itauma is one of the few people in this area who does not believe what the evangelical ‘prophets’ are preaching. He opened his house to a few homeless waifs he came across, and now he tries his best to look after 131…” Itauma’s works have saved the lives of thousands of children who would have otherwise been buried alive, thrown into the river, locked up in toilet for days to die of hunger or piecemeal, abandoned in the bush, forced to eat a local, poisonous eseri berry, choked or strangled to death. It is estimated that more than 20,000 children might have being stigmatized as witches in Nigeria alone and the number of deaths not ascertained as cases like these are usually not reported to the police for fear of reprisal from the witch-hunters. Even if they are reported, influential men in the society work round the clock to get them off the police hooks.