The welfare of students while they are in school rests with the headmistresses or headmasters and teaching staff. This is applicable to both boarding or day students, and so news about occurrences which impact negatively on these children while in school, especially when nothing is done to redress these, must be cause for concern.
In such cases, the relevant state agencies such as the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Gender Ministry, where this is about the girl-child, must step in where anomalies such as negligence are noticeable.
News about poor girls being raped by irresponsible adults is heartbreaking and must be addressed quickly. Let us speak out when such a crime is committed so we can root the canker from the communities.
Reports from the Upper East Regional capital, Bolgatanga, indicate that an autistic female student was preyed upon by two watchmen of the Bolgatanga Girls Senior High School.
The two allegedly took turns to rape the poor girl, details of which have it that on one occasion she was baited with food and on another the rape victim wanted her mobile phone charged, whereupon the other predating security guard who was going to help her ostensibly to do so pounced upon her.
We are pained that a female student in a boarding facility of a school could suffer such an ordeal and trauma. Although the regional education authorities have ordered the reversal of the status of the girl from day to boarding, as ordered by the school authorities, we are surprised that it happened at all. Why did the school authorities, as it were, punish the rape victim by changing her status to day in the first place? What injustice surpasses this?
We must commend the regional education authorities for the actions they have taken so far and ordered a probe.
A month has elapsed since the incident took place, and we doubt whether the girl is undergoing any psychological therapy to address her obvious traumatic condition in the aftermath of her ordeal.
One of the terms of reference of the probe should be whether or not the human predators in the school have preyed upon other female students. We would also want to find out what measures would be put in place to stop a future recurrence.
We would also suggest that the girl is transferred to another school and put in the care of a clinical psychologist to treat the trauma she is obviously suffering as a result of the ordeal she passed through. Being a centre of attention, she must be suffering double agony and, therefore, requires treatment.
Better measures should be put in place in schools and communities to protect our girls from irresponsible human predators.