Four of the six men who allegedly harboured two 15 year-old girls in a ghetto and took turns to sexually abuse them for one week have been arrested by the police.
Those arrested are Benjamin Mensah, Vincent Avi, Samuel Otoo and Kingsley Chidi, while two other accomplices, identified only as Seth and Senior, are on the run. The police have meanwhile mounted an intensive search for them.
Victims depressed
The two 15-years-old girls were found in a depressed state and in pain in the room of one of the suspects at Gomoa Nyanyano, near Kasoa, in the Central Region.
When they were finally rescued from the men, they could not walk and were crying hysterically.
The Public Relations Officer of the Accra Regional Police Command, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Mrs Effia Tenge, who briefed journalists, said on February 8, 2020, the parents of the two girls made a report to the Odorkor Police that girls left for school and never returned.
Parents of victims
The parents said the two girls were school mates who lived at Mallam. They left for school in the area on February 7, 2020, at about 6:50 a.m. but did not return home when school closed and all efforts to trace their whereabouts proved futile.
In its investigations, the police established that the girls left school unceremoniously at about 11 a.m. while classes were in session and met with two of the men, Seth and Senior, at McCarthy Hill.
The two men took them to a house at the Mallam junction area where they had sexual intercourse with the girls and left them to their fate.
Girls escaped
That same day, an elder brother of one of the girls saw them loitering around the Mallam junction and questioned why they were not in school at that hour but they absconded when he asked them to follow him home.
The girls ran to the four men (who have been arrested) and they took them to Gomoa Nyanyano and from there to Kasoa where they took turns to sexually abuse them.
Because the men lived in separate places, they transported the girls from one destination to the other and had sex with them on all the occasions.
Suspects arrested
After an intense bouts of sex lasting one week, one of the men, Samuel Otoo, called an aunt of one of the girls on February 14, 2020, informed her that the girls were lodging with him and demanded clothes and money for their up keep since they would be spending a month with him.
The information was given to the police and a joint operation by the Gbawe Lafa Police and the Nyanyano District Police Command at about 10:30 a.m. on February 14, 2020 led to the arrest of the four men from their separate homes in Kasoa.
Mrs Tenge said efforts were underway to get the other two men arrested while those arrested were being held for sexually exploiting the girls.
Medical examination
The girls have been taken to the Police Hospital for medical examination while the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) will also provide psychological counselling for them.
Mrs Tenge urged parents to be responsible and constantly interact with their children, provide the needs of their children, discipline them, supervise them and take keen interest in issues that concern their children.
She said parents must not invest all their time in their work but should also devote time to bring up their children, adding that they should also not give their children the free will to do whatever they liked as that would lead to child delinquency and they would become a problem to society.
She said DOVVSU also provided services such as psychological counselling for wayward children and parents could take advantage of such services.
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