THE BOGISS DEFILEMENT CASE : THE CASE FOR RADICAL CHANGE

By – Kasise Ricky Peprah

ENOUGH OF THESE ANTEDILUVIAN RULES — WHEN A CHILD MAY HAVE BEEN VIOLATED, CALL THE POLICE!

Dear Nyaaba,

There comes a point in the life of every institution when obedience to procedure ceases to be a virtue and becomes an accomplice to wrongdoing.

The reported defilement case at Bolgatanga Senior High School (BOGISS) ought to force Ghana to confront one such point.

We have created a grotesquely antiquated administrative culture in which the head of an institution may suspect that a serious crime has been committed against a child, yet must first navigate a labyrinth of bureaucratic protocols before involving the very institution constitutionally mandated to investigate crime: the Ghana Police Service.

That is unacceptable.

And I say this without apology.

A school is a place of learning. It is not a police station.

A headmistress or headmaster is an educator and administrator. He or she is not a detective, forensic investigator, prosecutor or judge.

When there is credible suspicion that a criminal offence has been committed, particularly against a child, the first duty of the institution must be to protect the child, preserve evidence and notify the appropriate authorities.

Not bury the matter under memos.

Not convene endless internal committees.

Not ask whether somebody’s superior has been informed.

Not wait for permission from a bureaucratic cathedral somewhere in Accra.

CALL THE POLICE.

That should be the rule.

THE CHILD IS NOT A FILE

Our regulations must stop treating the child as though she were merely another administrative incident.

She is a human being.
She may be someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. Someone’s niece. Someone’s precious little girl who was entrusted to an institution because her parents believed she would be safer there than anywhere else.

And increasingly, our girl children are being preyed upon by unscrupulous adults who exploit precisely that trust.
Some may be teachers. Some may be non-teaching staff. Some may be persons who have discovered that institutional hierarchy, fear, shame and bureaucratic inertia can provide useful camouflage.

We must therefore stop designing systems around the convenience and reputations of adults and start designing them around the safety of children.
If a child says something that reasonably suggests sexual abuse, the response cannot be: “Let us investigate internally first.”
Internal investigation may have its place in disciplinary proceedings.
It cannot substitute for criminal investigation.
The distinction is fundamental.

WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE AFRAID OF?

What is the institutional anxiety about calling the police?

That the school will receive bad publicity?

That the teacher’s reputation may be damaged?

That the school authorities may be embarrassed?

That parents will become angry?

That a “respected” member of staff may be exposed?

These concerns, where they exist, are precisely the wrong concerns.
The overriding question should be:
Is there a reasonable basis to suspect that a child has been sexually violated?

If the answer is yes, summon the police.
If the suspicion proves unfounded, the police investigate and the truth exonerates the innocent.
If the suspicion proves true, the police investigate and justice begins.
But if the institution suppresses, delays or bureaucratically sterilises the matter, the perpetrator may remain at large, evidence may disappear, witnesses may be intimidated and another child may become the next victim.

That is not prudence.
That is institutional gambling with children’s lives.

WE NEED A RADICAL POLICY RESET

Ghana must urgently review the regulations, circulars and administrative protocols governing suspected sexual offences in schools.

The principle should be brutally simple:

Where there is credible suspicion of a serious criminal offence against a child, the matter must be reported promptly to the Police and the appropriate child-protection authorities.

The school may conduct whatever administrative inquiry is necessary for its own purposes, but such inquiry must never delay, obstruct or replace criminal investigation.

Indeed, institutional staff should be trained to understand that their responsibility is not to determine guilt.

Their responsibility is to report suspicion, protect the child and preserve the integrity of the evidence.

That is all.

Let the police investigate.
Let prosecutors prosecute where the evidence warrants it.
Let the courts determine guilt.
That is how a functioning justice system works.

THE AGE OF “LET US HANDLE IT INTERNALLY” MUST END

There is something deeply disturbing about the culture of institutional self-protection that sometimes masquerades as discretion.

Let us handle it internally.

Those five words have probably protected more adults than children in our institutions.
They have allowed allegations to be quietly negotiated, inconvenient facts to disappear into drawers, victims to be persuaded to remain silent and accused persons to continue occupying positions of authority.

No.

A suspected crime against a child is not an internal administrative inconvenience. It is potentially a crime against the Republic.
And the Republic has institutions specifically established to investigate crime.

Use them.

OUR GIRLS DESERVE BETTER

We cannot continue preaching child protection while maintaining procedures that can make the reporting of child abuse unnecessarily cumbersome.
We cannot tell parents to entrust their daughters to our schools and then construct bureaucratic walls between those children and law enforcement.
We cannot demand that a headmistress exercise “due process” while a vulnerable child is potentially left in the orbit of the very adult against whom an allegation has been made.
And we certainly cannot allow institutional reputation to become a higher value than the safety of a child.
The reputation of a school can be repaired.
The career of an innocent teacher can be restored.
A false allegation can be investigated and dismissed.
But a child’s innocence, once violated, cannot be bureaucratically reinstated.
That is the moral distinction our regulations must understand.

CHANGE THE RULES. NOW.

The BOGISS matter should therefore not end with indignation, press statements and the ritual search for somebody to blame.
It should trigger systemic reform.
Every school should have a clear, mandatory and rapid protocol for suspected sexual offences against students.
Every head of institution should know exactly whom to call.
Every teacher should know what constitutes a reportable safeguarding concern.
Every suspected perpetrator should be removed from potential access to the child pending appropriate investigation, without prejudging guilt.
And every child should know that speaking up will activate protection—not bureaucracy.
This is not about being “soft” on accused persons.
Quite the contrary.
A proper police investigation protects the innocent from reckless accusations and protects children from genuine predators.
That is why due process and child protection are not enemies.

They are allies.

THE FINAL WORD

We must stop confusing procedure with justice.
A regulation that requires a school administrator to jump through bureaucratic hoops before reporting a credible suspected crime against a child is not sophisticated governance.
It is antediluvian governance.
And if our regulations are so old-fashioned that they place administrative protocol between a vulnerable child and the police, then the regulations, not the child, need fixing.

The message from BOGISS must therefore be unmistakable:
No more institutional silence.
No more bureaucratic paralysis.
No more “let us handle it internally.”
No more protecting institutions at the expense of children.
Where there is credible suspicion that a crime has been committed against a child:

PROTECT THE CHILD.
PRESERVE THE EVIDENCE.
CALL THE POLICE.

Everything else can wait.

The child cannot.

Respectfully yours,

Kasise Ricky Pepra

The Honourrebel Siriguboy