All this while, even as politics entered into and became mixed up with criminality, the question that begged for an answer was, were the students of Obuasi SHTS justified in embarking upon the action they took to ensure that their headmaster faced justice for all the allegations made against him for being a philanderer?
Did the authorities have any reports about his conduct since he assumed the headship of the school last year?
What is important now is the decision to reopen the school and seek justice for the 19 students who allegedly fell victim to the pleasure of the man who was supposed to be their chief protector.
In any event they were children brought under the care of the school authorities.
And if the headmaster could be suspected of such criminality, what about teachers and male students of the school?
The hapless girls might have gone through some ordeal.
Attempt at cover-up
Significantly, despite attempts to cover up, deliberate or otherwise, the resolve of the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service to pursue justice for the victims of the headmaster's sexual assault, is prima facie evidence that the students had a good cause, even if their approach was wrong.
It also means the headmaster has a case to answer and the Police, and, in particular the Attorney General, must ensure that justice is not only seen but is made to prevail.
The position of the Ministry of Education and the GES throws into shreds my initial suspicion that the headmaster might have attempted to stamp out sexual abuse on campus and in the process touched the ego or deflated the pride of some teachers and notorious students, who, in revenge, organised deviant students to teach the headmaster a lesson.
But as it has turned out, it is rather the headmaster who was widely abusing the pride and dignity of the girls until his cup was full.
Apologise
With the certainty and clarity of the situation, both the GES and the Ministry of Education must urgently apologise to the victims who had the courage to appear before the committee to testify, however incoherent, irrational or disorganised their evidence.
One could imagine how intimidating it might have seemed for the girls, without guidance, to have understood the questions to frame their answers.
Indeed, if all girls and women who are sexually abused, lose their dignity when defiled, broken and undermined by public officials into whose care they are entrusted, are able to report them, the incidence of defilement and rape will disappear.
It is thus unfortunate that instead of protecting these defiled girls, the committee rather exposed them to further public ridicule by showing their photographs in a public document against provisions in the Childrens Act, which counsels against giving away any information that could lead to the identification of victims of sex abuse.
If the committee was fair-minded, the girls would have been represented by objects, including alphabets.
Alternatively, I will suggest to parents of the victims to pursue legal action against the Ministry of Education and the GES for exposing the girls, whose only crime was their courage and determination to ensure that the headmaster was exposed to protect other innocent girls from sex abuse.
It must not be treated in the usual typical dysfunctional Ghanaian fama Nyame or ennye hwee mode because what the committee did was not only to distort and undermine the evidence of the maidens but more seriously to present them in very negative ways as spoilt and poised to baselessly destroy the headmaster.
In effect, the girls were projected as lacking morals, vile and destructive.
Whatever facade the committee wanted to place on the raw evidence has been wiped by the headmaster in saying that the girl who was accompanied by her father to lodge the complaint against him is 20 years and already has a child.
That is an admission that indeed, he had sex with a student.
The GES has a code of conduct on such matters and the sanctions must be applied.
More importantly, the fact of the girl being 20 years does not change her status as a student.
It is because of her age that the complaint was not about defilement but rape.
The headmaster might have presumed that once you have sex with a mature person, irrespective of the relationship and the circumstance, it must be normal, even when one party has made a claim of criminality against the other party.
If there was no incident, he could have denied it outright, that he has nothing to do with the girl.
He cannot thus accuse anybody of baselessly destroying his integrity to warrant an action for defamation.
In any situation of defamation, there are three grounds which must be proven together, that the statement is false, it refers to a person and it has been made known widely or to a third party.
All three must be established to succeed, but once he has admitted the issue with the 20-year-old student,everything about the grounds fall flat.
That then leads us to the defences against Defamation.
One of the key defences is Justification or the truth and once the fact can be established, it does not matter whether the figures put out are exaggerated, since minor inconsistencies will not defeat a defence of Justification.
Abuse of privilege
More imperative, there is abuse of privilege since the law does not permit the headmaster to invade the privacy of anyone of the girls he is alleged to have defiled and his own account about the girl of 20 years.
Whether he counted it as a defence or confession, it means that he cannot plead under Qualified Privilege.Equally.
His own statement that the complainant was 20 years, means that public commentary would be based on the defence of Fair Comment.
Since he is not entitled to Absolute Privilege, it means the headmaster has no case and that his right to privacy falls on all four major defences under Defamation.
Whilst not encouraging students to be unruly and destructive, in the particular instance of Obuasi SHTS, let the cost be borne by the headmaster, including the allegation that there was an attempt to bury a foetus, for which the traditional council is the proper body to initiate propitiation rites to appease the land.
What needs to be done must be done right.
