You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
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 />
- 200 -