The betrayal of the ones we trusted

There is a loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. It is the loneliness of knocking on the door of the institution that was built for you, and hearing only the echo.

Ghana’s citizens are learning that loneliness this October.

At Obuasi Senior High Technical School, the number of students who have come forward with allegations of sexual abuse against the suspended headmaster has risen from 16 to 19, according to investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni, who says more may follow because some did not report.

The allegations, which include rape, sexual assault and threats, are contained in his documentary. They remain subject to investigation. The headmaster has not been convicted of anything, and the Constitution says he is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That principle protects all of us, and I hold to it.

But presumption of innocence is a shield for the accused. It was never meant to be a blindfold for the system.

Look at what the reports say about who knew, and when. The Municipal Chief Executive for Obuasi has confirmed she was told last year, after a former sports master reported that the headmaster had slept with a student. A recording in the documentary reportedly captures the school’s housemistress describing how a female student was taken away at night after an allegation of sexual assault, and how the housemistress confronted the headmaster, who asked only how the girls were.

One political statement says some incidents were brought to school authorities as far back as March 2026, without meaningful action to protect the students. Reports also indicate the Ghana Education Service initially recommended only a transfer. A transfer would have moved the problem to another school. It would have done nothing to protect the girls already harmed, or the ones he might meet next.

Manasseh says this is not even his first visit to that school over such claims. By his account, his first visit, in 2018, was about allegations of sexual assault there too.

Only after the documentary did the machinery move. The Interior Minister told Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee that the police will conduct a thorough and impartial investigation, and that the matter will not be swept under the carpet. The headmaster resigned as constituency secretary of his political party and withdrew from its chairmanship race.

It is good that they moved. But why did it take a camera, a journalist and a national outcry? What was a child supposed to do in March, or in 2025, when she told the adults whose job it was to listen?

A girl who is abused by the person who holds the highest authority over her school has nowhere to run, because the system is built so that he is the one she must report to. When every door she knocks on opens onto someone who knows him, someone who fears him, or someone who votes with him, she learns something no child should learn. She learns that being believed is a privilege.

Ivan Apprey Baidoo was 20, a law student, on his way to play football. Prosecutors allege that a police corporal on traffic duty pursued the motorbike he was riding as a passenger, kicked it during the chase so that the rider lost control and crashed into a concrete barrier, and then left without arranging medical help.

Baidoo was pronounced dead on arrival. The corporal was charged with murder on 15 September, about three weeks after the 27 August incident. Those are the prosecution’s allegations, and the officer is entitled to his day in court.

I will say honestly that this case has seen movement. The officer was interdicted, the homicide unit took over, and charges were brought. But the family had to demand transparency, and a father had to say publicly that his son did not die in an ordinary accident. A young man who spent years studying the law died at the hands of someone who is paid to enforce it. Imagine what his mother thinks every time she hears the words “rule of law.”

Then there are those who die before the courts ever hear their names. On the night of 6 February, Charles Amissah, a 29-year-old engineer, was alive, stabilised and breathing. By dawn he was dead, after nearly three hours in an ambulance, denied admission at three of Accra’s most prominent hospitals because there was “no bed available”.

The investigating committee concluded that his death resulted from multiple system failures, including delays in emergency response, lack of proper stabilisation, and weak coordination between the major hospitals.

Nothing about this was new. In 2024, Korle Bu had to suspend referrals to its surgical and medical emergency unit because it was housing 60 patients in a 36-bed unit. Ghana’s ratio of roughly 0.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people is far below what the World Health Organization recommends. A person can fail by a system that never intended to hurt them. When failure is predictable, repeated and left uncorrected, it becomes a choice.

Due process is sacred. But justice delayed is justice denied, as every law student, including Ivan, was taught. A case that takes years leaves a victim waiting while her abuser keeps his title, his salary and his neighbors. It leaves a widow paying lawyers’ fees out of grief. In practice, the people who can afford to wait are the ones who need justice least.

That is how selective justice works. No one must announce it. It comes through who gets believed first, who gets a hearing, who can afford the lawyer, who has someone in the right office to call. The poor and the powerless are left with a thin version of the same Constitution.

Nineteen girls, a young man on a motorbike, an engineer in an ambulance. Different stories, one feeling. The people who trusted us to be ready, to be fair and to be fast found that the door was shut.

If we want to repair this, we must start by honoring what the Constitution says quickly. Investigate the Obuasi allegations transparently and protect the girls who spoke from retaliation. Create independent reporting channels in every school. Make emergency care a legal duty that does not depend on a vacant bed.

Hold officers to the same law they enforce on everyone else. And let no victim in Ghana ever again must wait for a journalist before an institution decides to care.

So, what is freedom, if a girl is not free from fear in her own school? What is justice, if it must be asked for in the right accent, from the right family, with the right lawyer and the right party card? Freedom is not only the absence of chains. It is the confidence that if someone breaks you, the state will stand on your side of the room.

We are better than this. But only if we act like it.