Talented young girls are silently drifting away from sports because of the sexual harassment they face at the hands of their coaches.
Investigations conducted by the Times newspaper at various junior and senior high schools in Accra over the last five months, revealed a staggering rate of abuse of innocent female athletes by their coaches.

In most cases, the ‘scruffy’ victims were reluctant to voice out their plight-either for fear of being stigmatized or victimizes by the coaches.
For them, playing for the country one day was a sure way to employment and economic salvation and that was what these deprive girls wanted. Thus, they were prepared to put up with any kind of exploitation and humiliation to make a living out of the sport, the investigation revealed.

This assertion was confirmed by Ms Rabiatu Zoure, a former versatile athlete of Kaneshie Awudome ‘3’ Junior High and the Accra Senior High School.

Now 24, Rabiatu represented the two schools in both track and field events. The multi-talented athlete took part in disciplines such as javelin, shot putt, netball, basketball and the sprints between 2001 and 2005 and won a number of gold medals in the process.

It came as no surprise when she gained a call-up into the national netball team in 2005. Sadly, her dream of pursuing sports to a higher pedestal ‘went up in smoke’ following the incessant harassment from various coaches to sleep with her.“Naturally, I feel sad that my career was truncated prematurely. But upon a much sober reflection, I think I took the right decision,” she reminisced.
Another girl, identified only as Mawuena, now 20, recounted how she was showered with praises by her coach ‘even to a fault.” It all started with flowers and chocolates, then with kisses. Not long after, the coach – a married man with two children – was sending teenager love notes. By the time she was 16, they were having sex, the potential long jump world beater, who hails from the Volta Regional capital, Ho, recalls.

Like Rabiatu, Mawuena refused to reveal the name of her coach or coaches. She did, however, mention the name of her former school to this writer, but implored that it should be left out of the story.
A young talented female football player at La, in Accra, who claimed to have attended Junior High School and completed in 2005, also confessed to the Times that she always carries condoms in her kit bag, as she never knew when she had to oblige to the coach of the school’s football team to get into the playing eleven.

Over the past decade, more than 50 coaches in 40 schools scattered over Accra have been fired or reprimanded for sexual misconduct, ranging from harassment to rape, the investigations revealed. Nearly all the cases involved male coaches victimizing girls, amazingly, according to sources, at least 36 of these coaches continue to coaches or teach.
The number offending coaches is much greater. When faced with complaints against coaches, school officials often failed to investigate them and sometimes ignored a law requiring them to report suspected abuse to police.

Many times, they disregarded the instruction requiring them to report such misconducts to the education office.Other districts, the Times was told, also hired coaches they knew had records of sexual misconduct but believed such trainers possessed the magic wand to turn their school teams around.
The investigations also revealed that many of these coaches would leave a particular school after being exposed, but continued to coach, this time at elite private institutions in other parts of the country.

When the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, Nii Nortey Dua, was contacted on phone yesterday, he denied knowledge of such happenings at the schools.

However, retired National Coordinator of Physical Education (P.E) programmed, Mr. B K Dzokoto, said he heard allegations and rumours of abuse of female sports girls by coaches during his time, “but in all situations nobody came forward to report, so we took such reports as one of those trivial things”.
According to Mr. Dzokoto, who retired in October 2008, “it would, however, be imprudent to say some coaches were not taking in due advantage of the girls.”

He said many coaches at the junior school level especially, were volunteers whose background might not have been well scrutinized before being engaged by the school authorities “and this could pose a lot of danger to the aspirations of the naïve girls.”

The 26-years educationist encouraged girls who fall victim to such harassments to master courage and report to the appropriate authorities for the necessary action.

However, as much as victims of such abuses are encouraged to come out to expose such dreadful coaches, draconian punishments should be meted out to the perpetrators as it pertains in other countries,” he stated.

Source: G. Times