Bettie Johnson-Mbayo

Bettie Johnson-Mbayo might not have expected a month-long prison sentence for parking her car. And yet, after Bong County representative Marvin Cole took issue with her and her husband parking near his home in January 2022, an argument erupted. “You need to take control of your wife,” Johnson-Mbayo claims that Cole told her husband.

She believes that what happened next was an attempt to silence her, an investigative journalist who roots out corruption in Liberia, West Africa and puts it under a spotlight.