of Taking Bribe From Perpetrators



THE MOTHER of a defiled girl, Felicia Serwaa has accused the Tesano Police Officer in-Charge of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) ASP Esperanza Ayesu-Danso of collecting bribes from the four suspected boys and letting them off the hook.

She is therefore calling on the State to intervene since according to her, she has nobody to pursue the case for her and her 15-year old defiled daughter, Leticia Asare.

According to Madam Serwaa, 45, four boys gang-raped her daughter on Friday, March 23, 2012 at Abotare, near Abeka in Accra and when the incident was reported to the DOVVSU, the boys were arrested but she was surprised to see the boys going round making mockery that after all they had paid GHc3, 000.00 to the Officer, and so they were free.
She mentioned that having realized that, she went back to the Police station, only to be thrown away by ASP Ayesu-Danso after collecting the medical endorsed form from her, claiming that the boys were only minors, a situation Madam Serwaa described as very unfortunate and intimidating.
Responding to why the boys were released without the noticed of Madam Serwaa, ASP Ayesu-Danso explained that the boys were arrested on Monday, March 26 and the medical form was given to the woman the same day, but she did not return it until Thursday, March 29, a situation she said, she could not detain the boys for that long and more over, they were minors.
While the DOVVSU boss insisted that the ages of the boys ranges from 13, 15, 16 and 17, Madam Serwaa believed that three of the boys were over 20 years. She wondered why ASP Ayesu-Danso requested that she brought the weighing card of her victim girl, when she told her that she was only 15 years old, but refused to ask the boys to bring theirs to ascertain their real ages.
She also alleged that when she presented the medical endorsed form, the DOVVSU boss claimed that the Doctor’s report was not correct and so gave her a new form for another report, but she stated that she did not have money to do that again, since the first one, the Doctor who attended to her at the Kaneshie Polyclinic collected GHc150.00 before signing the form.
The development compelled the victim’s mother to speak to Okay FM, an Accra local radio station, and this, according to the Madam Serwaa, ASP Ayesu-Danso took offence and said she had been disgraced, and for that matter, she was no more ready to handle to case, stressing that unless Madam Serwaa went back to retract what she had said on the radio, the case was closed.
Narrating the incident itself, Madam Serwaa said when Leticia was lured into the room where the incident took place, the boys threatened to kill her if she shouted. One of the boys was said to have held her legs, another held her hands while the third held her mouth with the four engaged in defiling her, and it continued one after the other.
After the dastardly act, they warned the girl not to tell anybody or else they would kill her, and for fair of the threat, she could not tell her mother until she became ill and when she was thoroughly interrogated before she mentioned what had happened to her.
It has established that following the developments, signal came from the Regional DOVVSU two weeks after the incident occurred before ASP Ayesu-Danso asked the investigator to go to the scene of the crime without the complainant and the victim.
Madam Serwaa told the paper that due to the circumstances beyond her reach, she reported the matter to the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, and she is also calling on various Human Rights groups to assist her to fight the case. She mentioned that almost every day, the boys and their cohorts come around threatening to beat the defiled victim, saying that she and her family are living in a state of fear.