Overt acts, including taking sexually explicit photographs, molesting children, and exposing one's genitalia to children are all crimes

March 31st, 2009

Accra (Ghana) — On the front page of this newspaper, we have vividly captured an emerging trend of pedophilia in Ghana. Pedophilia is defined as an obsession with children as sex objects. Overt acts, including taking sexually explicit photographs, molesting children, and exposing one's genitalia to children are all crimes.

Repugnant as this inhuman act is, Ghanaians continue to disguise it as defilement. The number of defilement cases in Ghana appears to be increasing, with a reported incident of forced sexual intercourse with a minor appearing almost daily in the media.

The Daily Guide newspaper reported last month that a 24-year-old fisherman allegedly defiled a 7-year-old girl at New Takoradi in the Western Region. In another report, the newspaper reported that 44-year-old Eric Engman was arrested by Nima Police in Accra for allegedly defiling five girls ranging in age from 6 to 8.

And Public Agenda in its Friday edition published a report of a 20-year-old man, Yaw Nyatseh of Sankore, near Kukuom in the Asunafo South district, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in hard labour for defiling two teenagers. Public Agenda also reported that a 24-year-old man was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in hard labour after pleading guilty to a charge of defiling a 10-year-old pupil.

In the first two months of this year, the Accra Divison of Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service (DOVVSU) reported 77 cases of defilement. March figures have not yet been computed.

Last year, there were 552 reported cases of defilement, up 81.3 percent from the 449 reported in 2007. In 2008, defilement cases ranked third among all crimes. The Western Regional office of DOVVSU last year recorded a total of 2,071 general cases, 133, or .06 percent, of which were cases of defilement, defined as corrupting the chastity of or debauching, violating or raping.

The Acting Chief Psychiatrist of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Akwasi Osei told Public Agenda that although pedophilia is against the law in Ghana, it is not treated as such; instead it is treated as defilement.

The legitimate question is why these social misfits are being treated leniently when society ought to banish them? In fact our law enforcement agencies have overlooked this aspect of sex crimes for far too long and it is important to take it into consideration now.

The fact that some perpetrators of defilement are arrested several times for the crime has raised concern as to whether the nation is really dealing with pedophiles and Ghana is refusing to name the criminals as such.

Besides, there are lots of loopholes in our system. Unlike developed countries, there are no security psychiatric units within the prisons which provide reformed training and psychiatric treatment. Consequently, such convicts come out of prison only to repeat their crime."

Tracking defilers or pedophiles is very difficult because units like DOVSSU are inadequately resourced to track perpetrators. This calls for the speeding up of the National Identification System with the biometric data of the citizenry to make it easier to trace defilers. Also, we need more stringent laws and greater enforcement of those laws to curb the rising cases of defilement. All stakeholders need to join hands to ensure that we smoke out those bent on destroying our young girls.

 

source.Public Agenda (Ghana)