Silence is not Golden
-Why laws don’t engender disclosure of sexual abuse in Ghana. She was five or six, Mary can’t recall but she remembers vividly what happened on several nights for the next 5 years while she shared a room with her cousin. “He would approach my bed each night” she says, “pull down my pant and …”. “It was Christmas, 2006”, NY recounts. “After church service, my sister and I followed him home because he said he wanted to change his outfit and take us out”. Later she recalls that her mother called her sister to assist her in making dinner so she was left alone with him, he locked the door. She was 16, he was 25. “It was early morning, I went to the staff common room to ensure that everything was in place,” says MJ, a third victim of sexual abuse. Then she met a teacher who had come in early to prepare for his class. “He asked me to help him with something, when I got close, he tried to hold my breasts”. These three women do not want to be named, they fear the stigma of sexu...