MINISTER BATTLES LIVING HELL FOR LITTLE GIRL SLAVES OF GHANA
Ghana’s great modern-day anti-slavery campaigner Rev Walter Pimpong will be in Australia from April 25th to May 27th this year. Rev Pimpong, the Executive Director of the Inter-National Needs Network Ghana, will be here to seek assistance from caring Australians in his work of liberating the child slaves of Ghana. Of course, not all the slaves are children now, but they certainly were when they were sent to the Shrine.
CHRISTIANS FREE 3,300
Through Walter and his team, IN has already been instrumental in the release and rehabilitation of approximately 3300 women. On average, each of these women have between 2 and 4 children they have borne to the fetish priest. The children also need rehabilitation. It is an enormous task.
These little girls and women have suffered an appalling life of deprivation and sexual abuse under the Trokosi slave system. Taken as little girls, they are given by their parents to the Shrines as an atonement for sins committed by their living and dead relatives. It is horrible.
Just imagine the emotional trauma. You are permanently removed from your home as an innocent (often tiny) child; taken to a strange place where you are forced into manual labour every day. Your parents leave you there and you don’t when, or if, you will see them again. Only a child, you must grow your own food. When you reach puberty you will be beaten if you resist the sexual advances of the shrine priests.
You will give birth to children while you are still a child yourself. If somehow you are released, you will be shunned by society and even your own family. Your life is simply a “Living Hell” – in constant dread, shame and abject despair, surrounded by others who have also had their hopes and dreams dashed by the life they are living – some of whom have been enslaved for their entire lives.
WHAT IS A TROKOSI BRIDE-SLAVE?
A little girl:-
* Sent to the Shrine as young as five years old. (Some, even younger).
* Who may grow into an old woman in the Shrine – I have met some in their 80’s and 90’s who have never known a day of freedom until International Needs set them free.
* Who is given as “an Atonement” for “sins” of family members, to appease the anger of “the ancestral gods”
* A bride of the spirits – she belongs to the “gods” and thus the shrine and fetish priest.
* An innocent victim, while the guilty go free.
* A child in bondage often for life.
* An object for sexual “religious” rituals by the Fetish priest.
* A stigmatised person in the community – feared because of the belief that they are owned by the gods
* A single mother – children she bears to the fetish priest are her responsibility and he has little regard for them.
AusAID GRANT TO REHABILITATE 900 FORMER TROKOSI SLAVES
A grant from the Australian Government of $300,000 to International Needs Australia will be used to rehabilitate 900 released Trokosi slaves over the next three years.
This is great news for people who have no way of being assimilated back into society without assistance from others.
The Inter-National Needs Network is now seeking financial support to establish the Adidome Modular Training Program designed to address the many needs of released slaves. INA needs to match the AusAID grant of $300,000. The program requires the provision of a residential premise that is essential due to the complete lack of facilities in the remoteness of the Trokosi practising communities. The freed girls and women require trauma counselling and vocational training to enable them to provide for themselves and their children as they adjust to life outside the shrines.
Can you embrace this, for the sake of these women in bondage?
Please contact David Ayliffe, Executive Director, the Inter-National Needs Network, Australia: phone 03 9720 2244; fax 03 9720 1066.
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