Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Nigerian juju (trafficking) Juju and oath systems Osuwem, Shai-Osudoku District, Greater Accra Region, Ghana · 2025

Ghana: fetish priest sentenced to fifteen years for defiling and impregnating a fifteen-year-old girl entrusted to him

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

traditional/fetish priest

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

Asumah's standing as a fetish priest is what led the victim's grandmother to entrust the child to him without suspicion, and he then used his claimed spiritual power over the community — the threat that the gods would strike the victim dead — to secure her silence after the assault, invoking the same authority both to gain access and to prevent disclosure.

  • Curse or witchcraft threat
  • Other spiritual authority or belief

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2025-11-01 · trial and sentencing

    Odumase-Krobo Circuit Court, Eastern Region, Ghana. Ebenezer Asumah, 26, a self-identified fetish priest, was convicted of defilement contrary to section 101(2) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labour, after admitting sexual intercourse with the 15-year-old victim (claiming it was consensual) but being found guilty following trial.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • community deference to a fetish priest's standing, used to obtain the grandmother's trust and the child's presence
  • confinement by locking the victim inside his room
  • threat of death by 'the gods' to enforce silence

Primary record

Sources

national press sentencing report GhanaWeb, 'Fetish priest jailed 15 years for defiling and impregnating minor' (2025).

Reports the Odumase-Krobo Circuit Court sentenced Ebenezer Asumah, 26, to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labour for defiling a 15-year-old girl at Osuwem. States Asumah approached the victim's grandmother on 5 August 2025 and, invoking a hand injury, persuaded her to let the girl accompany him to cook; after she prepared food, he locked her in his room and raped her on three occasions, warning her she would be 'struck dead by the gods' if she disclosed it. The victim was found pregnant when hospitalised weeks later.

Related record

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