A 30-year-old man, Kweku Amoah, not his real name, has voiced out his ordeal about how he was constantly sexually harassed by his female teacher in 2003 when he was a 14-year-old second-year pupil at a junior high school (JHS) in the Birim Central Municipality of the Eastern Region.

This comes in the wake of the ‘Sex for Grades’ undercover documentary by BBC Africa Eye, which implicated some male lecturers at the University of Lagos (Nigeria) and the University of Ghana (UG) Ghana.

Recounting his experience in an interview which aired on Class 91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, 9 October 2019, the victim said he believes the teacher took advantage of him and played on his innocence and naïvety to get him involved in an act he regrets today.

According to Kweku, it all started when the female teacher in question got transferred to his school that year.

He said the class regarded the young female teacher as their “big sister” due to how she related to them.

One day, he said, the teacher invited him and some classmates to her home, which was in the same town as the school, for a lesson in Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

“There weren’t many computers in those days and she had this desktop and she invited us to her house to teach us how to use the computer,” he said.

The first lesson, Kweku recalled, was on a Wednesday when four of them went to the teacher’s house in the afternoon after school hours.

The victim said the computer lessons continued for weeks “but there was this day my colleagues couldn’t go and I went there [teacher’s house] alone”.

He said in the middle of the lesson, the young female teacher paused, looked him in the face and said: “Kweku, you know you are a nice boy”. He replied and told the tutor that he was already aware that he was a nice person and a brilliant student.

The teacher continued and told him that she wants him to be “his best friend even though you are my student”. The victim said he wondered how a form-two student could be the best friend of a teacher. However, the teacher persisted and told him that she could teach him additional things to make him super brilliant.

He said he was eager to learn new things after the assurance of the woman and visited the teacher more frequently to benefit from the things she wanted to teach him outside school hours.

On one afternoon, after school, Kweku said he followed the teacher to her home and she prepared ‘ampesi’ for lunch, which they both ate and then the teacher asked him to wait for some minutes to shower after going through a very sweaty day, however, he said he left the premises and went home.

He said the teacher did not see him around after coming out of the bathroom, so, she came to his family house where he lived with his single father to report that she had promised to teach him computer lessons but he refused to wait after school to learn. 

Kweku said his father was furious and scolded him for avoiding the computer lessons when his teacher had volunteered to give him extra lessons.

One day, while in the teacher’s house, he said she went into the shower and returned naked. The victim said he felt uncomfortable and wanted to leave but the teacher asked him to sit and later called him to help her put on her brassiere. In the process of fixing the hook, he said, the teacher turned to face him, grabbed him by the waist and inserted her hands in his shorts to fondle his penis.

Shocked by the conduct of the teacher, the victim said he yelled but the teacher asked him not to say a word to anyone. He then asked the teacher what she wanted with him, however, the lady asked him to calm down while directing that he should have sex with her.

”Are you serious?” Kweku recalled asking the teacher, and the response was: “Yes, I want you to do that with me”.

“I didn’t know what sex was by then,” he said soberly to the reporter while trying to hold back his tears.

He continued: “She held my penis, put it in her mouth; I was just there and didn’t do anything because I didn’t know what was going on”.

After the act, she gave him 2000 cedis back then (now 20 pesewas) and he departed. He said after the incident he felt “very confused” yet he didn’t know how to tell anyone about the incident. The oral sexual acts, however, continued for weeks.

On one occasion in class, Kweku said the teacher threw a question at them relating to agriculture which he was able to answer. The teacher’s remark subsequently was: “I owe you something today”.

All in his mind, Kweku said he thought the teacher was about to give him money due to the financial difficulties his family was going through at the time. They went to the teacher's house together after school and after a meal of rice and stew, the teacher gave the victim 20 pesewas again and told him: “Today, I want to have sex with you”.

He said he asked the teacher what sex was because he knew nothing about it. She replied: “You will lie down and I will sit on you”.

He said the teacher then went to the bathroom, washed down and returned to the room naked. Kweku said he covered his face with his hand at the sight of his naked teacher but she drew closer, held his hands and removed it from his face and asked him to lie on the bed.

“She held my penis again and put it in her mouth and she sat on my penis after it became hard. We had sex,” he told the reporter in a slow shaky voice.

“Until that day, I didn’t know what sex was and she told me to keep mute and never reveal what happened to anyone,” he narrated, as he explained that the teacher added, in the Twi parlance: “Kweku, today, you have made me very happy”.

He said the sexual acts continued “almost every two weeks until she left the school. Even when she left, she came back to look for me twice”.

Subsequently, Kweku said he felt the urge to have sex anytime he saw a lady whose figure looked like his former teacher, leading to an incident in which he nearly had sex with his own sister.

“It didn’t happen though but it still haunts me but it’s fine,” he said, nearly shedding tears.

He said the teacher later relocated to Koforidua and lost touch with her until 2010 when he heard that she had travelled to Germany.