Overview
The horrifying revelations emerging from Obuasi Senior High Technical School, where up to 19 female students have reportedly come forward detailing alleged sexual exploitation and abuse by members of the school’s leadership. Such a report should send chills down the spine of every parent, educator, and policymaker in Ghana.
For far too long, our cultural reflex has been one of uncomfortable silence. We treat conversations about adolescent sexuality as a taboo subject. We whisper about puberty behind closed doors while continuing to believe that our teenagers live in a vacuum of innocence.
The tragedy at Obuasi SHTS demonstrates that our silence is not protecting our children; it is leaving them defenseless in the face of predatory power dynamics.
As a population health researcher and health education specialist with a keen interest in sexual and reproductive health, particularly adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH), I view the Obuasi SHTS scandal not only as a failure of institutional safeguarding. While the reported delays and systemic blind spots are a national shame, they also represent a catastrophic breakdown in how we prepare young people to understand their bodies, their rights, and their voices.
I want us all to take note, reflect and act on these points;
- The myth of silence as protection
In many Ghanaian homes and institutions, including schools, apprenticeship settings, churches, and mosques, sex education is often reduced to a frantic, last-minute warning to “focus on your books” or “acquire a skill” and avoid pregnancy. Discussions about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), healthy relationships, consent, and bodily autonomy are frequently relegated to the background.
We operate under the dangerous fallacy that if we do not talk about sex, our children will not think about it, discuss it, or encounter it. We must stop deceiving ourselves.
The reality is starkly different. Every day, young people navigate biological changes, digital spaces, peer pressure, and complex social relationships.
When we deny and starve Ghana adolescents age-appropriate, life-relevant, and scientifically grounded Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), we effectively hand them over to guesswork, misinformation, peer myths, and, worst of all, manipulative adults who exploit their ignorance.
I firmly believe that comprehensive sexuality education is not, as critics often claim, an invitation to promiscuity. It is a life-saving tool. Ghana urgently needs culturally responsive and context-specific CSE delivered through a holistic lens.
Comprehensive sexuality education teaches young people about anatomy, consent, bodily autonomy, healthy relationships, and, most importantly, how to recognize the red flags of emotional manipulation and physical coercion. When a young Ghanaian understands what healthy boundaries look like, they are better equipped to identify inappropriate or predatory behaviour long before it escalates behind a locked bungalow door.
- The Power and Gap of Sex Negotiation Skills
A critical missing pillar in our national discourse is sex negotiation skills.
In many Ghanaian settings, this concept is rarely discussed. Yet, sex negotiation is simply the capacity of a young person to assert “No!,” recognize the illegitimacy of inappropriate demands made by a relative, friend, teacher, religious leader, or any other authority figure, and exercise personal autonomy without fear of punishment, retaliation, or academic sabotage.
In hierarchical environments such as boarding schools, the power imbalance between a student and a headmaster, headmistress, teacher, or housemaster can be immense.
An adolescent summoned to an administrator’s residence faces far more than social discomfort. They may confront a frightening web of authority, fear of poor grades, threats to future opportunities, and societal pressure to remain silent.
It means teaching our children that:
- Consent is not passive compliance. Silence, fear, intimidation, or the absence of resistance does not constitute consent.
- Authority does not equal ownership. No grade, favour, errand, recommendation, or opportunity is worth a student’s dignity, safety, or well-being.
- Support systems must be functional. Unsafe demands can only be challenged when adolescents know that immediate, confidential, and non-judgmental reporting channels exist.
Teaching sexual negotiation and assertiveness skills means explicitly validating a young person’s right to reject unwanted advances, regardless of who is making them.
- Navigating the cultural nuances: Home, Faith and School
To address these challenges, we must confront some of the cultural realities that shape Ghanaian society. Our deep-seated traditions of overly respecting elders, preserving family reputation, and maintaining religious conservatism often contribute to silence survivors of sexual abuse.
Assertiveness must never be mistaken for disrespect.
This is where parents, religious institutions, and school guidance and counselling units must evolve from gatekeepers of silence into proactive protectors.
- The role of parents:
Parents can no longer afford to outsource the moral and sexual education of their children entirely to schools.
The home must become a psychological sanctuary where children feel safe discussing bodily changes, relationships, concerns, and uncomfortable encounters.
If a child believes that raising concerns about an adult’s behaviour will result in scolding, punishment, victim-blaming, or accusations of being “provocative,” they are far more likely to choose and remain silent.
Parents must intentionally build open channels of communication so that children can speak honestly without fear of judgment or punishment.
- The religious paradox:
Our country is a deeply religious country, and faith-based messaging holds immense sway over adolescents. Discussions in some religious spaces focus heavily on purity and piety while paying insufficient attention to the reality of sexual abuse and predatory behaviour. Religious leaders must move beyond messages that focus exclusively on abstinence and explicitly condemn abuse perpetrated by individuals in positions of power, including those within religious institutions themselves.
Faith should strengthen a child’s dignity and sense of personal worth. It should never be used to guilt-trip children into silence or unquestioning submission when they experience abuse.
As the Bible reminds us in 2 Timothy 1:7:“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
In many secondary schools, guidance and counselling structures exist but are intertwined with chaplaincies and religious frameworks. While faith can offer important moral grounding, it must never weaponize guilt, emphasize “purity” over safety, or attempt to pray away systemic abuse.
Predatory behaviour cannot be solved through spiritual platitudes alone.
- The school counseling unit as a safe haven:
Guidance and counselling units exist in many schools, yet they are often understaffed, underfunded, or perceived primarily as disciplinary offices rather than support services.
These units should operate as trusted and independent safe spaces where students can confidently report concerns involving any authority figure without fear of intimidation, retaliation, or pressure to remain silent.
Students must understand that counselling services exist for their protection and that reports will be handled professionally, confidentially, and compassionately.
For counselling units to be effective, they must remain insulated from school administrative politics and prioritise student welfare above institutional image.
- Rebuilding the system: Where do we go from here?
The fallout from the Obuasi SHTS scandal, including interdictions, police investigations, and widespread public outrage, represents a critical national turning point. Holding perpetrators accountable and investigating any individuals or structures that enabled abuse is both necessary and urgent.
Nevertheless, prosecution is reactive. Prevention requires structural reform.
- Institutionalized ASRH specialist and tailored CSE:
The Ghana Education Service, Ministry of Education, and National Council for Curriculum and Assessment must move beyond outdated discomfort surrounding sexuality education and permanently integrate rights-based CSE into second-cycle institutions.
Qualified ASRH specialists should play a central role in training students as well as academic and non-academic staff.
Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health specialists represent a largely overlooked resource within our educational system. Unlike many traditional teachers who may feel culturally constrained or uncomfortable discussing sexual and reproductive health topics, ASRH specialists are trained to deliver objective, evidence-based, culturally sensitive, and rights-based information.
They help dismantle stigma and equip young people with the language and confidence needed to identify, describe, and report boundary violations.
Integrating ASRH specialists into school health programmes and collaborating with School Health Education Programme (SHEP) coordinators and school counsellors would help ensure that sex education and sex negotiation-skills training are delivered professionally, effectively, and consistently.
- Established ironclad and safe reporting hotlines:
Students cannot be expected to report abuse through chains of command that may protect abusers. Ghana needs independent, confidential national reporting mechanisms, including digital platforms and toll-free hotlines, managed outside local school politics and linked to appropriate counselling and child protection services.
- End the culture of victim blaming and media exposure:
As authorities such as the Minister of Gender, rightly emphasized, careless media reporting that reveals or hints at survivors’ identities inflicts further harm and discourages others from speaking out.
Protecting survivors must remain our highest priority and supreme law.
Conclusion
No child is sent to school to barter their body for an education.
The students at Obuasi SHTS were failed by adults and institutions entrusted with their protection. We must honour their courage by dismantling the walls of silence, replacing taboo with truth, and equipping every adolescent girl and boy with the language, knowledge, confidence, and support they need to say “No” and be respected, protected, and heard.
Only then can we build schools that are not merely places of learning, but places of safety, dignity, and hope.
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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