When the guardians become the predators: Ghana’s child sexual abuse crisis

When the guardians become the predators: Ghana’s child sexual abuse crisis

Every day this year, about seven Ghanaian girls aged between 10 and 14 have walked into a health facility pregnant. Read that again. Not young women. Girls. Children who should be learning fractions and fighting over skipping ropes, not preparing for labour wards. Between January and July 2026, the Ghana Health Service recorded 53,415 adolescent pregnancies across the country. Of these, 1,501 involved girls aged 10 to 14. Under Ghanaian law, a child under 16 cannot consent to sex. So, every one of those 1,501 pregnancies is not a "teenage pregnancy". It is evidence of defilement. It is child sexual abuse, with a medical record attached. And those are only the children whose abuse left a mark we can count. For every girl whose abuse ended in pregnancy, how many more carry it silently ; no pregnancy, no report, no file, no justice?