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The Domestic Violence Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service (DOVVSU) has encouraged the public, especially women who are going through domestic abuses, to promptly report to save their lives. Madam Victoria Larbi, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), at Adenta DOVVSU, speaking with some selected women in the area, said the Unit was established to handle cases of abuses, therefore victims must report their issues instead of suffering in silence.
ASP Larbi was speaking at an engagement organised by the Adenta Municipal Office of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), in collaboration with the GIZ and the European Union on rule of law and corruption. She said DOVVSU was established to protect women, children and men who faced all forms of abuses, explaining that they handled a wide range of issues, including domestic physical, emotional, financial, economic, verbal, non-verbal as well as sexual abuses respectively.
She explained that physical abuse involved inflicting pain on the body, while emotional abuse could involve acts of innuendo, mocking, and body shaming, such as calling people ‘Oboshie’(overweight).
She said keeping such emotional abuses without seeking help could lead to hypertension and living in fear; therefore, it was very important for people to speak up against such acts. ASP Larbi further stated that sexual abuse could also come in forms like inappropriate, unapproved physical fumbling, advising that parents must also pay attention to their male children, as now some were also being ‘sodomised.’ “Now, even the boys are also being abused; don’t think that it is only the girls that are prone to sexual abuse.
Some women too are abusing men sexually; they slap their buttocks and touching them inappropriately and they must report too,” she said.
On financial abuse, she said, “If the person who is supposed to care for you financially, for example, your husband is not giving you money or is exploiting you financially, it amounts to financial abuse.” Touching on other abuses, she indicated that refusing to provide food for one’s children and women refusing to help their husbands when in need amounted to economic abuse, while other abuses included psychological and digital abuses.
Madam Araba Diaba (Esq.), the Head of the Madina Office of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), talking on corruption, noted that it came in many forms, including bribery, nepotism, embezzlement, and favouritism. Madam Diaba said corrupt practices affected all Ghanaians one way or the other, explaining that it had a rippling effect on the provision of good health, education, social amenities, and other developmental projects.
Madam Sylvia Osei-Bonsu, the Adenta NCCE Municipal Director, urged Ghanaians to join in the corruption fight by reporting such activities to authorities for actions to be taken. She encouraged groups to contact and invite the NCCE and other partner agencies to their meetings for such education.
