Let me tell you something uncomfortable, because we owe our community honesty more than we owe it comfort. When most of us picture a child in danger, we picture a stranger. A shadowy figure near a school gate. A car that slows down a little too long. We teach our children “don’t talk to strangers,” and we feel, in that moment, like we have done our job as a parent or a guardian. But the truth that is harder to sit with, is that this is rarely how it actually happens.
A Study by K.E. Boakye, et al., (2025), reported cases of female child sexual abuse found that in about 80% of cases, the perpetrator was someone the child already knew, a family member, a neighbour, an acquaintance, a friend of the family Strangers accounted for only around 12% of cases. Let that sink in for a moment. The danger we spend so much energy preparing our children for is, statistically, the smaller risk. The bigger one is sitting at the dinner table, walking them to school, or sitting beside them in the church pew. I don’t say this to frighten you. I say it because fear pointed in the wrong direction doesn’t protect anyone.
Why is this so hard to accept?
There’s a reason we default to fearing strangers instead: it’s simpler. A stranger requires no complicated conversation, no uncomfortable suspicion, no risk to a relationship we value. But a neighbour who’s always been kind? A stepfather who provides for the family? A teacher the whole community respects? A priest/pastor everyone trusts? Naming them as a risk feels almost like betrayal.
And that discomfort is exactly the space abuse hides in.
Studies on child sexual abuse across many contexts describe a pattern that repeats itself again and again: someone in a position of trust builds a relationship with a child, often through small kindnesses, gifts, or attention, before quietly crossing a line. In Ghana, specifically, cases have involved stepfathers, stepbrothers, teachers, and even religious leaders. The very people children are taught to obey without question. One report even found that of 100 documented cases, more occurred at school (53) than at home (43), with several students admitting they actually felt safer at home than in the very institutions meant to protect them (Plan International, Ghana). With our ears on the ground, we will hear a teacher and a female student’s sex video on social media.
This is what I will call “grooming”: not a dramatic, obvious act, but a slow, quiet process of trust-building that makes the eventual abuse feel, to the child, almost impossible to name or resist.
The weight of “collective shame”
There’s another layer here, one that I think many of us recognize immediately, even if we have never had a word for it. In Ghana, family and community identity often means that one member’s actions become everyone’s burden. When the perpetrator is a relative, a family friend, or someone respected in the community, families sometimes hesitate to report, not because they don’t love the child, but because they fear the shame it will bring on the family name, or because they simply cannot imagine “one of ours” doing such a thing.
I understand this instinct. It comes from love, from loyalty, from a desire to protect the family unit. But I have to say, gently and honestly: protecting the family name should never come at the cost of protecting the child inside it. A family’s dignity was never meant to be paid for with a child’s silence.
What this means for how we protect our children
If we are honest about where the real risk lives, our protective instincts need to shift too. This does not mean living in suspicion of everyone close to us; that isn’t healthy, and it isn’t realistic. But it does mean: Teaching children that their body belongs to them, and that this rule applies to everyone, including relatives, teachers, and religious leaders, not just strangers. Paying attention not to “bad-looking” people, but to patterns: an adult who seeks unusual amounts of alone time with a child, who gives gifts in secret, who discourages a child from telling others about their relationship. Believing children the first time they tell us something feels wrong, especially when it involves someone we trust and love. Understanding that reporting is not an act of family betrayal. It is, in fact, the deepest act of family loyalty there is: protecting the most vulnerable member of it.
A closing thought
I think, at the heart of this, is a simple truth we don’t say enough: love and trust are not the same as safety. We can love someone deeply and still need to hold them accountable. We can trust someone for years and still need to stay alert. These things are not contradictions; they are what real protection actually looks like.
This week, as we talk about identifying abuse and understanding how to report it, I hope we can hold this truth gently but firmly: the danger our children face most often does not wear the face of a stranger. It wears a familiar one. And our job as parents, neighbours, teachers, and as an organization built entirely around keeping children safe, is to love our children enough to look closely, even at the people closest to us. That is not suspicion. That is protection. And every child deserves it.
Pauleson Utsu
(Safe Child Advocacy [SCA)
