Vice President of Imani Africa has added his voice to calls for the dismissal of the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service.
According to Kofi Bentil, the poor handling of the case involving the three missing Takoradi girls makes her unsuitable for that position.
“Dismissal of Tiwaa is an absolutely fair call to make. The affected families have lost every confidence in her,” he told Evans Mensah, host of Joy News’ TopStory Tuesday.
Under-pressure CID boss, Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, has said she was misunderstood when she announced that the three kidnapped girls had been located.
She told Accra-based Atinka TV, she ‘wanted to give the families hope’ by that announcement, conceding the location of the girls remains unknown.
That “we know where the girls are’ and “they are safe...very soon they will be brought back home” comment on April 4, sparked fresh pressure on the investigations body to produce the three girls from Takoradi in the Western region kidnapped at different times since August 2018.
Mr. Bentil, the man who first gave the subject of the missing girls' national prominence said, he is saddened by what has transpired since the issue gained national prominence.
According to him, this issue demonstrates the amount of care the ordinary person gets from state institutions.
He is hurt that the state has not provided any form of support for the families to deal with the psychological and the emotional trauma associated with a case as prominent as this.
He feels the police has completely failed in the handling of this issue.
“What is the proper police protocol for handling a case like this,” he quizzed.
Families suffering from system-induced trauma – Psychologist
A clinical psychologist has waded into the debacle of the missing Takoradi girls.
According to Nortey Duah, the system that is supposed to provide help to the affected families is the same system that is actually harming them.
“This is system-induced trauma,” Nortey said Tuesday.
“I can identify with the trauma that the families are going through,” he said.
“When you hear news that your [missing] daughter has been found, it is the best news but to be let down the way they have been let down, I cannot mobilise words to express the impact,” he added.
He says that the families are both psychologically and physically broken.
“The family needs feedback. It helps them to cope despite their dire situation. The family needs some form of closure,” he lamented.
He adds that it is important that “they get some form of psychological help. Even churches and some support groups can also help.”
On what kind of help the family requires at this stage, he says “they need informed feedback, not lies.”
“You do not give feedback which is uninformed. Feedback must be informed and does more good than harm.”
The story so far
Pressure is mounting on the police to find three girls who have been kidnapped in the Western Region town of Takoradi.
The girls – from separate families – were taken from various locations in the town since last year and nothing has been heard about their whereabouts.
Priscilla Blessing Bentum, 21, was the first to be taken in August 2018. The student left home for choir practice but never returned. Her worried father reported her disappearance to the police 24 hours later. It is now known that she was abducted at Kansaworodo, a suburb of Takoradi, an oil-rich town.
Four months later, Ruth Love Quayeson also disappeared.
The 18-year-old took a cab ride from her home in Diabene to the Butumagyedu Junction and never returned.
Priscilla Mantebea Koranchie, 15, was last seen on December 21, 2018. She told her younger siblings she was taking a walk to a nearby town, Nkroful and since then no one has heard from her.
Read more here: #BringBackOurTaadiGirls: The Takoradi kidnappings - The story so far
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