Sounding the warning “Perverts on the prowl, watch out” would be such an appropriate alarm button to press in our morally challenged society today.
Many years ago we could boast, and rightly so, about the high Ghanaian moral values. Not anymore when no week elapses without outrageous reports about adults – some septuagenarians defiling kids who are sometimes below the age of nine. Frankly, when grandfathers defile kids the ages of their granddaughters or even great granddaughters, as being witnessed today, society needs to be examined to isolate psychological anomalies.
Taking this social aberration for granted would not be in our interest, especially since the perversions continue to replicate across the country.
Personnel of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service should be passing through harrowing moments listening to the narrations about some of these outrageous occurrences and even seeing the abused kids or even babies suffering the defilement-spawned trauma.
We are compelled to ask rhetorically though, whether society is under a spell of sorts or just being irresponsible; or that the perpetrators are suffering an emerging genetic disorder.
A few weeks ago, two old men made the front pages of some major newspapers in the country, and for the wrong reasons: they had jointly defiled a five-year-old girl.
It is one crime which is beyond our ken; we can only make conjectures about the factors which lead to such pervasion. We are at a loss as to where to begin or even end about such a sacrilege, especially when it was committed by persons who should be the source of moral counselling in our typical Ghanaian setting.
We can no longer entrust our children in the care of others for upbringing due to the risk of their being defiled by even those in whose custody they are.
After observing, albeit superficially, the various and recent incidents of defilement of kids, we are tempted to conclude that many of the crimes have been committed by artisans, an anomaly which perhaps only sociologists and psychologists can help us to unravel.
Morality has never suffered such a setback.
We have been constrained to return to a subject about which we have editorialised in various editions, but the aberration has showed no sign of receding, the efforts of law enforcement agents and the judiciary notwithstanding.
We appear helpless because even some of our so-called men of God have been perpetrators of some of these heinous aberrations. That is why we are even more disturbed.
It behoves parents to ensure that their children do not fall victims to the many pedophiles prowling all over the place. Children should for instance be told about how not all adults should be trusted, especially strangers.
When children return home from school or elsewhere, parents should constantly monitor them. This way unusual behaviour due to sexual abuse can be detected early and the necessary action, such as informing law enforcement officers, taken.
Parents should ignore interventions from socalled opinion leaders in the neighbourhood by reporting to the police when abuse is detected.
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