GhanaConnect: It took me 11 years to get over defilement at 9

The alleged defilement of a 4-year-old girl in Assin Fosu in the Central region has once again touched the raw nerve of Ghanaians.

Outrage has left state agencies scurrying all over the place to find justice for the girl after a Joy News report.

The incident has lifted the lid again on sexual abuse, rape, and silent sufferers. The story that broke on Tuesday had gotten national attention enough to land on Joy FM's GhanaConnect for a citizen-based engagement over the menace.

Host of programme Evans Mensah spoke to a mother on the phone whose 11-year-old daughter had been defiled last week in the capital city and a young woman in the studio who was defiled when she was in class 2 aged nine.

For the mother of the 11-year-old, the heartache just last week Friday was too fresh in her memory to muster the courage to talk about her daughter's ordeal.

A man in his 30s sexually abused her daughter and has been arrested. Evans Mensah wanted to know how her daughter was feeling.

"Hmmmm...she is fine by the grace of God", she supplied a standard Ghanaian line even in the midst of a crisis.

She got off the phone as Evans Mensah narrowed in on Ms Bawa sitting in the studio.

One man's jumbled up sexual wiring jammed himself into a nine-year-old girl and consequently jammed her life leaving her with a disfigured personality - for 11 years.

Bawa was in class 2 then, all alone home, as a result, ill health, her weakness and vulnerability was the pedophile's shield and strength.

He was a neighbour who played with her and called the girl, 'my future wife".

"I developed some kind of trust for him", Bawa remembered the innocent faith in a predatory felon.

Protected by her parent's absence, the man came home and asked the girl to follow him. "He gave me toffee and I followed him", she said and managed to laugh off her permissible naivety.

Suddenly in a secluded area, he pounced on the child and defiled her.

"Since then I became a totally different person" she entered a new phase of her life; trauma, fear, pain cooked up in her head a sense of inferiority.

"I used to be a bubbly person", she said and kept the incident from her parents. They noticed the change in her personality, but could not figure it out or prod her to open up.

Primary school would give way to JSS and then SSS as the girl, the teen and the adult carried the burden of another man's perversely calculated foolishness.

Bawa, now in the university, found her new atmosphere empowering and liberating.

"When I got to the university, I saw people being themselves, accomplishing the dreams and purposes in life," she said.

The powerful words of Marianne Williamson held true for Bawa.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frighten us".

And this freedom of others in the university is where Bawa found her freedom and the bubbly personality of that nine-year-old child buried in a 20-year old woman resurrected again.

The pedophile was eventually jailed five years after he touched a vocal victim.

Bawa now has an NGO, Katart Africa, and she visits churches and schools to raise awareness about defilement.

She encourages girls to come out and heal as society learns of the silent suffering and feels ashamed. 

You can contact her via: [email protected] 

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