BREAKING THE SILENCE ON SCHOOL-BASED SEXUAL ABUSE (PAGE 11, MARCH 23, 2010)

Aminata Seidu (not her real name) was born and bred at a village in the Sissala West District of the Upper West Region.
She never knew about education, never thought of going to school and so she did not even understand why her parents always went to farm and but wanted her to go to school. On one occasion, she even went to the extent of asking her parents why she must go to school while they always went to farm.
However, after strenuous efforts, Aminata’s parents, together with members of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), managed to convince her to come to the realisation that it was important for every child to be in school to develop himself or herself.
Consequently, Aminata enrolled in school and her brilliance began to show. She became the toast of the entire school and was loved by both students and teachers. She began to market her village and was more or less the saviour of the school anytime it came to debates and other competitions against schools in neighbouring communities.
A teacher in the school who could not let his eyes off the young brilliant girl proposed to her but, being the intelligent girl that she was, she turned the proposal down. The teacher, who did not take kindly to the young girl’s stand, started intimidating her, both in class and anywhere he found her in the school.
That, along with other forms of threat, brought with it some sort of fear in Aminata who, from then on, could not even ask or answer questions in class as she used to. This affected her performance, to the surprise of many, but she could not confide in anyone, neither did the other school authorities bother to find out from her what was happening to her.
Aminata, for fear of being punished by the teacher, started boycotting classes and eventually dropped out.
This and many of such instances have contributed to the harassment of female students and pupils in the school environment and those who cannot withstand the harassment drop out of school.
For this reason, Plan International, an international NGO, embarked on a research to find out the effects of sexual harassment on many children of school-going age in various communities in other parts of the world.
The Tumu Programme Area Manager of Plan Ghana, Mr Richard Boadu, at a ceremony to launch an initiative known as the “Learning without fear” campaign at Gwollu in the Sissala West District, quoted a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2002 which estimated that 150 million girls and 73 million boys under 18 had either been raped or suffered other forms of sexual violence.
Mr Boadu said apart from sexual exploitation of pupils and students, there was also the issue of bullying which, in the long term, led to the development of violent behaviour in schools.
He said victims of bullying, whether physical or verbal, tended to lose their self esteem, feel ashamed and, in the long term, tend to dislike schooling.
On the issue of sexual violence, he noted that victims usually suffered psychological trauma and could be infected with sexually transmitted diseases, in addition to unwanted pregnancies, which could also lead to unsafe abortions, social stigmatisation or the victims being forced to drop out of school.
It turned out that even though corporal punishment was widespread in African schools, it was against the laws in 21 out of the 51 African countries.
He said Plan Ghana, a subsidiary of Plan International, was working closely with the Ghana Education Service (GES) to provide training for teachers and also enforce teachers’ code of ethics as part of efforts to eliminate that canker from schools to make them more attractive to pupils and students, particularly those in remote areas.
“It is time to break the silence on school-based sexual exploitation and the abuse of children to get more and more children to enrol in schools,” Mr Boadu stressed, and explained that more schools in the southern part of the country were familiar with the “Learning without fear” campaign and so Plan Ghana was extending the programme to the northern sector, starting in the Sissala West District.
He said the organisation had also embarked on radio talk-shows to propagate the message and encourage people to take their education seriously.
He also appealed to all, including teachers, parents, the police, among other stakeholders, to support the “Learning without fear” initiative to make schools less intimidating for pupils and students and ensure a violence-free school environment for children.
Launching the initiative, the Sissala West District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Robert Wavei, said the fear of not being protected came with a lot of consequences, including lack of concentration in class, and expressed the hope that the “Learning without fear” campaign would boost the confidence of pupils and students to confront the challenges.
He advised teachers, especially male ones, to always bear in mind that the pupils and students put under their care were to be moulded and not to be molested.
Mr Wavei also reminded teachers that it was not always right to use the cane, since sometimes counselling was the best option.
He also advised students who maltreated their peers to desist from that behaviour.
A committee with representations from the Department of Social Welfare, the GES, Youth Vision, an NGO, the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the Police Service (DOVVSU) and some members of the Rights of the Child (ROC) groups of Plan Ghana, was later inaugurated to see to the effective implementation of the “Learning without fear” campaign.