Four years after a 13year-old girl had been brutally raped, the police are yet to arrest the culprit because the officer in charge of the case died shortly after he initiated investigations into the matter. The parents of the victim also claim that police investigations were stalled because they could not cough up the GH¢60 allegedly demanded by the Volta Regional Office of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) to facilitate the transportation of its officers to a village to arrest the culprit. The victim, who was diagnosed by a medical officer at the Volta Regional Hospital as having suffered serious internal damage, has since not received any treatment, a situation that has led to further complications. Apart from her education which was cut short after the incident, ending her dream of becoming a nurse in the future, Ama now has a bloated stomach which looks like a nine-month old pregnancy, even though she is not pregnant. Ama's physical growth has also been stunted, according to medical sources, as a result of the inability of her parents to afford medical treatment. She looks pale and still suffers from intermittent pains which make it impossible for her to sometimes sleep at night. Ama, who was at the office of The Mirror in Ho with her father to narrate her ordeal, recounted that some time in February 2004 when she returned from school (she was then in Class Six), her mother sent her to fetch water from a stream in their village, Hodzo, which is a 15-minute drive away from Ho. According to her, while on her way to the stream with her friends, the culprit, Jonas Agbenya, 19, called her to help him to carry sand, which he had in a head pan. She left the friends behind and went to assist Agbenya, but as soon as she stretched her hand to help him raise the pan to his head, he grabbed her by the hands and dragged her into the bush. Ama said despite her screams, her friends, who were playing noisily, did not hear her. While in the bush, Jonas gagged her with a piece of rag and forcibly had sex with her. Thereafter, she said, Jonas warned her not to tell anybody about what had happened or he would kill her wherever he met her. She thus kept the issue to herself and endured the pain, a situation that made her to collapse sometimes, attracting the attention of her mother who sent her to hospital where the doctor succeeded in getting her to reveal the ordeal she had gone through. Thereafter, the doctor directed them to lodge a complaint with the police, which they did, but the policeman who was in charge of the case at the Tokokoe Police Station told Ama's parents that he was going to Accra and that when he returned he would proceed to arrest the culprit. According to the victim's father, Mr Prosper Bansah, when they went to the police station, they were told that the said officer had died when he went to Accra and the police had stopped pursuing the case. Ama and her parents later went to the regional DOVVSU, then called the Women and Juvenile Unit of the Ghana Police, but they were told by an official (name withheld) to bring GH¢60 to enable the police to travel to the village to arrest the culprit. "I am just a farmer and there was no way I could have raised that amount of money so we did not go back to the police again. Subsequently, I used the little money that I managed to get to buy over-the-counter medications for her," Mr Bansah told The Mirror, almost in tears. Despite her condition, Ama is resolved to go back to school if she receives sufficient medical attention. For her, the dream of becoming a nurse is one thing that she can never let go. She, has therefore, appealed to benevolent individuals and organisations to go to her aid for her to get treated so that resume her education. Source: The Mirror