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The girl went out and then came back .. and started beating me and playing<br />

with my penis. Then she carried me into the room and asked me to lie on<br />

her; she was forcing me and I did not know what it was that she was about;<br />

she put me on her and was lifting me up and down…. She must have been<br />

about 16-18 and I was about 12 years old.<br />

The respondent, a 36 year old, was recalling an event that took place<br />

when he was too young to appreciate sexual relations with a person of<br />

the opposite sex. An older girl who may not have had much experience<br />

herself took advantage of the boy’s condition to experiment. The case<br />

seems to fall between rape and masturbation. These are events that are<br />

more rampant that many respondents care to recall and relate. It would<br />

seem that when the victim reported the care-taker’s behaviour to his<br />

mother, the latter did nothing much about it except to desist from entrusting<br />

the care of her children to the girl.<br />

The victim went on to recount another episode of female-male rape or<br />

pseudo-rape.<br />

... we were uprooting the cassava when suddenly she embraced me and pulled<br />

me down, then began to undress me. She laid on me. At that point I was<br />

grown enough to know about sex and what she was attempting to do, though<br />

I did not show interest.<br />

Though there are too few accounts of females attempting to rape boys,<br />

it seems that boys do not usually put up a resistance.<br />

Explaining Non-reportage of Adult Rapes<br />

A Ga cultural expert when asked about rape remarked that ‘Rape did not<br />

exist among Gas, ...’ This statement may seem at first sight surprising but<br />

it reflects the general Ghanaian attitude of denial where rape is concerned.<br />

The public tendency is to raise doubts when a woman reports<br />

having been raped. This is changing thanks to the advocacy role being<br />

played by the alliance of women’s NGOs in recent years, as women’s issues<br />

come to the fore in public discussions. Hitherto it was assumed<br />

that women were to blame for rape episodes, or that those women<br />

claiming to have been raped just wanted to get even with a man by accusing<br />

him of rape in reaction to some unfulfilled promise. Thus the<br />

doubts and the insensitivity that greeted complainants and accusations<br />

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