Obuasi SHS girls are not your content

The most obscene thing about a child-abuse scandal is rarely the first obscenity. It is the second: the arrival of adults who come not to help the victims but to harvest them.

Sixteen girls at Obuasi Senior High Technical School have reportedly alleged sexual misconduct by their headmaster, Zakaria Abdulai. The Ghana Education Service has interdicted him, the Education Minister has directed his suspension, and the Criminal Investigations Department is investigating.

These are allegations awaiting proof, and they are grave enough to require no embellishment. Yet before the investigation had run its course, the vultures had begun to circle: commentators, party communicators, and newsroom crusaders sharpening their knives.

The Auction of Pain

Ask what many of these people did in the first hour. They did not ask how to protect the girls. They asked who could be embarrassed, which minister could be dragged, which rival party could be tarred, and which media house could be shamed. A schoolgirl’s worst experience became a talking point before it became a case file.

These are often the same partisans whose feminist conviction appears only when the accused can be tied to their opponents. Where was this thunder when complaints reportedly sat with municipal and education authorities for months? Where is it for the countless abused children whose tormentors have no political value and whose stories will never trend? Outrage that depends on the party affiliation of the accused is not outrage. It is opportunism wearing mourning clothes.

The Press and Its Appetite

Journalism’s duty here is narrow and solemn: investigate fearlessly, report accurately, protect identities, and keep pressure on the authorities until justice is done. It is not to turn testimony into a serialised drama, to hunt for the most lurid detail, or to treat a child’s violation as a traffic strategy. Reporters who dwell on graphic specifics, hint at identities, or pronounce verdicts for clicks are not defending these girls. They are monetising them.

The Cost of the Circus

The damage is concrete. Every sensational headline and every televised grandstand drags the victims and their families back into the glare. That is a second victimisation, this time with a press pass. Every hour of partisan noise is an hour stolen from the slow, unglamorous work of evidence-gathering, prosecution, and reform. Every reckless verdict, whether of guilt or innocence, hands a future defence lawyer an argument and risks denying these girls the conviction they may deserve.

The Real Scandal

If the reporting is accurate, the central scandal is not one man. It is a system that heard complaints and answered with silence. Complaints reportedly reached municipal and education authorities months before anyone acted. Who received them? Who filed them away? Who decided that a headmaster’s reputation outweighed the word of teenage girls?

Those are the questions that deserve our fury. Suspension is not justice, and interdiction is not accountability. A ministerial directive that arrives after months of reported inaction reads as damage control, not leadership. Until the officials who sat on warnings are identified and made to answer, these girls have been failed twice: once by whoever harmed them, and again by whoever knew.

Aim the Anger Properly

So hold no bars, but aim them correctly. Aim them at any adult who sexually exploits a child, if the evidence proves it. Aim them at every official who ignored a warning. Aim them at institutions that guard their image before they guard their students. Aim them at the pundit who looks at a violated child and thinks, “content.”

And aim them at ourselves if we allow this to become a three-week outrage that fades the moment another scandal arrives.

These girls are not props, not evidence, and not ammunition. They are children who went to school expecting protection. They are owed a prosecution, not a performance; reform, not rhetoric; and silence from everyone with nothing useful to say.