Sex Scandal Hits Methodist School

For the past six years, Girls at Calvary Methodist Preparatory and Vocational School at Adjiringano in Accra, have had to live with the ordeal of being subjected to sexual harassment and defilement many times by none other than the School Administrator, Mr. Jacob Kwaku Osei Owusu.

However, luck ran out for him last April when he was caught by the Assistant headmistress of the school. Strangely, the school authorities, led by ex-Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Rev. Ama Afo Blay, instead of handing him over to the police, rather made it possible for him to run away, although he had confessed to defiling the girls.

The Herald’s information is that Mr. Osei Owusu has, for years, been defiling the minors in his office, and although the authorities were aware of this they failed to act, allowing the evil deed to go on in a school owned by the Adabraka Calvary Methodist Church in Accra.

The Assistant Headmistress, Mrs. Diana Darkwah, The Herald learnt, one day found that Mr. Osei owusu’s office was strangely locked up during school hours. Suspecting something might be going on behind the door, she incessantly kept knocking on it.

Finally, the door was opened, and lo and behold, there was Mr. Owusu, standing utterly confused, with a girl of 14 years, equally bemused.

The Herald was told that the girl, upon questioning, provided leads that led to other minors being identified as victims of the 66-year-old man’s evil sexual desires.

The girls, numbering seven and in the Junior High School (JHS), were made to write statements on their experiences with Mr. Owusu. This happened on April13, 2011, The Herald was told.

On the next day, April 14, 2011, Mr. Owusu was called before the supervisor of the school, Rev. Minister Ama Afo Blay and other teachers, including the Headmistress, Madam Grace Dadson and her assistant, where he admitted in a statement to having defiled the minors, and went down on his knees, pleading he should be pardoned because it was the devil who drove him into committing the crime.

The typical pedophile he is, Mr. Owusu had lured his victims into swearing an oath of secrecy to him because of threats such as: “if you say it, I will dismiss you from the school; you know you didn’t pass your entrance examination, so I will sack you if you dare say it.”

His modus operandi was to invite the girls individually to his office, pretending to send them on an errand.

He then settles them into a conversation about relationships between boys and girls, asking whether they have had boyfriends and if they did, how much were the boys able to give them and how often they had sex with them.

After this, Mr. Owusu would ask for a relationship, pledging financial support in terms of paying school fees, buying dresses, providing pocket monies and getting them mobile phones in return for love and sex.

One of the girls, name withheld, a J.H.S (2) student, said Mr.Owusu invited her one day to his office and asked her to be his girlfriend and “diary”.

She said Mr. Owusu mentioned to her the names of the girls he had defiled in his office. He also mentioned some female teachers who had fallen prey to him, implying that she would not be lowering her image if she consented to his proposal.

According to the girl, whatever Owusu told her, she told a male classmate whom she confided in. According to her, Owusu said one of the girls, name withheld, he had had sex with, was the sexiest girl he had ever come across in his life; he ended up aborting a pregnancy for her.

The girl said Owusu told her that one of the ways of luring the girls into having sex with him was to lace tea with some herbal aphrodisiac for them to take.

Mr. Owusu threatened to sack the classmate of this girl, in whom she had confided the things he had told her, if she denied him sex.

According to the girl, Owusu had one day sent her to buy him credit for his mobile phone, and when she got to the office with the credit, the school administrator was naked waiting for her. She said she quickly threw the “top up” onto the floor and ran out.

Another girl said that Mr. Owusu once asked her to clean his office. Whilst doing this, he came in and proposed to her, and started fondling her, and ended up defiling her through the anus.

The third girl was also asked by the school administrator to meet him in his office on February 18, 2011, where he proposed to her, and gave her GH¢10.00. Then three days later, she was summoned to the office again. But this time, the moment she entered, the school administrator closed the door behind her, and started removing her underwear.

Our source said before she could protest, Mr. Owusu forced her to bend head down, and tried to penetrate her from behind “like the way dogs do”. But because she was struggling, “he found it difficult to penetrate further” and then he asked her to go away.

The Herald has gathered that some teachers suspected that the school administrator had been abusing the girls, but they were afraid to report to the Headmistress.

A teacher was said to have had the experience of two of her student girls being invited to the school administrator’s office, and when they came back, they complained of lower abdominal pains and had difficulties sitting fully on their chairs.

Invitations to the administrator’s office were mainly for girls, who invariably spent an hour or more there before joining their colleagues back in the classroom to learn.

The Herald was further informed that since the disclosure of the scandal, Mr. Owusu had seen some parents of his victims and bribed them to stop their daughters from testifying against him.

Mr. Owusu, said to be a resident of Mamobi in Accra, was seen last week at Adjiringano in the company of his wife. His wife is said to be a trader at the Mamobi market. He has three children with her, the last of whom works at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.

He has two other children from a previous marriage. Some of his children are said to be living abroad with their wives and children.

The matter, according to Mrs. Dadson, the headmistress, has been reported to the Madina Police.

Inspector Georgina Ribe, station manager of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), confirmed that the police were investigating the matter. She accused the school authorities of not handing over Mr. Owusu to them before the school broke up for the Easter and second term holidays on April 14, 2011.

When the school reopened last Tuesday, Mr. Owusu failed to report,The Herald was told.

Efforts to talk to Madam Afo Blay on the issue have proved futile. She was said to be in a one-week seminar that ended yesterday, Sunday, May 8, 2011.