Obuasi Senior High Technical School did not create a safe environment where students could feel confident reporting abuse, according to Dr Millicent Adjei, Ashesi University’s Safeguarding Lead. She spoke about the issue on Joy News’ PM Express on Tuesday, pinpointing failures in professional boundaries and the school’s duty to encourage openness.
“The school did not create that environment for the children, for the young children to be able to have that confidence to report to anyone,” Dr Adjei said. She identified a critical gap in protection exposed by a student’s reluctance to report her experiences. “The second level is the environment, the environment that didn’t make it conducive because one of the victims did not feel confident enough or comfortable enough to report, so that enabling environment that allows and empowers them to report was broken.”
The student’s house prefect eventually reported the matter, Dr Adjei said, after the girl had “several experiences,” including being hospitalised for caning. “Nothing was done about it,” she added.
Her comments came in the wake of investigative reporting by Manasseh Azure Awuni, whose piece Inside the Dreaded Headmaster’s Bungalow detailed allegations of sexual abuse involving female students and the headmaster, Zakaria Abdulai. The investigation also documented complaints made to authorities months before Abdulai’s suspension.
The Ghana Education Service has interdicted the headmaster pending investigations, and a formal complaint has been lodged with the police.
Dr Adjei emphasised the responsibility of those charged with children’s welfare to allow them to raise concerns. “When you are given that duty of care, you are supposed to be the protector. You are supposed to create that environment where children will be able to come to you, right?”
She also questioned the practice of students delivering food to the headmaster’s residence, calling it an early failure to maintain professional boundaries. “Where children are going to the headmaster’s house, that is the first level that shouldn’t have happened.”
The safeguarding failures, Dr Adjei said, extended beyond physical boundaries. They included whether children trusted the school enough to seek protection when something went wrong.
The case has drawn attention to gaps in school safeguarding protocols and the challenges in creating spaces where students can safely report abuse. The intervention of the house prefect, rather than school authorities, illustrates the breakdown in trust and protection that Dr Adjei described.
According to Joy Online.
