Girl allegedly locked up for five years....

...WAJU investigates

Kissi-Emem (C/R), Mar. 13, GNA - The Central Regional Office of the Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) of the Ghana Police Service is investigating a case in which a girl, now aged 14, had allegedly been locked up in a room for five years on suspicion of being a witch.

The unit is liaising with the Department of Social Welfare in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo- Abrem (KEEA) District to take care of the victim, who is also said to be paralysed, pending investigations into the case.

The officer in charge of the unit, Superintendent Beatrice Amoako, announced this on Saturday, when she led a team of policemen to Kissi-Emem, a settlement at Kissi near Komenda, where the victim was residing, following a tip-off.

When the team, accompanied by a reporter from the Ghana News Agency got to the settlement, it found that contrary to reports that the victim was looking very unkempt and had been isolated, she was lying asleep on a mat in what appeared to be the family room, looking very clean. The team, which suspected that the victim's relatives must also have been tipped off, about the intended action, did not meet her mother, Madam Aba Akyere, a farmer, who was said to have gone to the farm.

Her paternal grandmother, Madam Adjoa Tawiah, 75, debunked claims that her granddaughter had been locked up because she was a witch. According to her, five years ago, her granddaughter, who was then aged nine, was struck by a strange ailment one night and began screaming at the top of her voice, shortly after her father's death, and was rushed to the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital the next day, where she was given some medication and sent back home.

Madam Tawiah said, soon after, the victim became paralysed and her mother, who had eight other children, sent her back to the hospital about four times and later sought herbal treatment for her when there was no improvement in her condition.

She said her daughter in-law, "gave-up" efforts to seek further treatment for the victim due to poverty, but stressed that she was well cared for and had not been locked up and neglected as being speculated.

The victim's elder sister, Mary Ankomah, aged 19 years, corroborated her grandmother's story and claimed that her sister was properly cared for by their mother.

Superintendent Asamoah later told the GNA, that the girl's mother would face prosecution if it became evident that the girl has been abused.