The fight against sexual abuse
Kwansema lived with her mother who happened to be a single parent. Her mother did not want her to be like other girls whose education ended abruptly due to teenage pregnancy.
As a result, she had been educating her on acts that could make her fall into that situation. ‘Stay away from boy/girl relationship because it can destroy your life,” she often warned.
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Kwansema took her mother’s advice seriously and as much as possible avoided any form of unhealthy relationship with the opposite sex.
One day, the Agyeman family moved into their neighbourhood. In no time, Kwansema and her mother became friends of the Agyeman family. In the Agyeman family was a young man called, Fiifi Agyeman, who was about 10 years older than Kwansema. Fiifi and Kwansema became friends and started helping Kwansema with her studies.
Kwansema saw Fiifi as an older brother and because of this, she often went to the Agyeman family’s house regularly to seek his help. Sometimes, Fiifi even allowed her to sit in his room to study and it never crossed her mind that what she was doing was dangerous.
Surprisingly, her mother had not said anything about the danger in her actions.
One day, after returning from school, Kwansema had a Mathematics homework to do. She tried very hard to solve the questions but she could not. She then decided to go to Fiifi, who was at home around that time for assistance. When she got to their house, Fiifi was all alone sitting at their porch reading. After approaching him for assistance, Fiifi asked Kwansema to buy banana and groundnut for him which she quickly went across the road to buy.
On her return, Fiifi asked her to take it to his room which she did. Just as she was about to leave the room, Fiifi entered and pushed her onto his bed in an aggressive manner. Kwansema did not take kindly to this so she tried to get up from the bed and asked Fiifi angrily why he did that.
She did not finish her sentence and Fiifi instructed her to take off her clothes. That was when it dawned on her what was happening. ‘He is going to rape me, oh my God! No!,’ she said to herself. “ Please, help me!” she began to shout for help.
She shouted for help as she struggled with Fiifi who was trying to take off her clothes. Just as Fiifi was about to have his way, help finally came. The door swung open and it was Agya Nimo, Fiifi’s uncle. He shoved off Fiifi and pulled Kwansema out of the bed. He made sure Kwansema was in good composure before he let her go.
By this time, a crowd had gathered in the house because they had also heard of Kwansema’s screams. When they heard of what Fiifi had wanted to do to Kwansema, they were astonished.
Information quickly got to the queenmother of the town about the incident. She asked some men to go and fetch Fiifi, who at that time risked being lynched by the crowd. He was later handed over to the police for him to face the law.
The queenmother sensed from the incident that most of the girls in the town were naive about boy-girl relationship and adolescent reproductive health.
In order to prevent any such incident from occurring in future, the queenmother started a campaign to educate teenage girls on adolescent health reproductive issues.
Each week, she organised the girls and they discussed a range of topics about their sexuality and how to avoid becoming victims of teenage pregnancy.
She went further to institute stiffer punishment against any boy or man in the town who sexually abused any girl. These things the queenmother started significantly reduced the teenage pregnancy rate in the town, as well as sexual offences against minors.
What happened to Kwansema was a lesson to all teenage girls to be careful with males they take as friends.
Kezia Adjetey,
Star International School,
Teshie Tsuibleoo.