Sexual Abuse and Violence

Sexual violence in Ghana is an issue that I've only begun to hear about recently, so this post will not offer anything close to a comprehensive overview of the topic, but speaking in the most general terms I can say rape and molestation are viewed with much less gravity in Ghana than in the U.S.  I want to pass this story along because given my American upbringing, I was personally shocked by it. 

In a recent news story, two teachers were accused of child molestation at a rural school. The local community was outraged when all the teachers at the school, including the alleged molesters, were transferred to other schools, leaving the school temporarily without instructors.  However, there has been a lot less said about the fact that the two teachers with histories of molestation will continue teaching and therefore have continued access to children.  When I asked one of my coworkers to explain this to me, he explained that many parents are not very concerned about molestation.  He even told me that a friend of his used to teach at a rural school where some nights, mothers would prepare elaborate meals, dress up their daughters, and have the girls deliver him the food in the hopes that they might entice him sexually.  This was presumably so that their daughters would have a chance to marry the teacher, who was probably relatively wealthy and prominent in the area. 

The same coworker then explained to me that in most rape cases, the family of the perpetrator typically pleads with the victim's family not to take legal action, and in most cases the victim and her family comply.   Especially in cases where the rapist is a wealthy or prominent man, he said that public opinion tends to weigh in favor of the rapist, and people tend to speak badly of the victim or her family for taking the case to court even if the victim is prepubescent.  Most of the rape cases that reach court are cases in which the rapist is poor, and it is primarily in these types of cases that public opinion favors the victim.  It seems to me to be one of many examples in Ghanaian society in which a person's value is assessed according to his or her net worth. 

I personally found a lot of this information confusing and I wish I were in a position to give a more thorough explanation of why, for example, people would criticize a 10 year old rape victim for seeking justice against a 50 year old rapist.  Hopefully I can shed more light on this in the future.  Finally, it would be irresponsible of me not clarify that these attitudes are not completely ubiquitous here in Ghana and that many people take rape and molestation very seriously.  Still, if a teacher accused of molestation is allowed to continue violating children, it says something about the overall attitude on sexual crimes.