FETISH PRIEST IMPREGNATES PATIENT...Names son after shrine (MIRROR, PAGE 3)

From Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu,
Wassa Afransie

An unsuspecting farmer at Wassa-Afransie, a farming community in the Wassa Amenfi East District of the Western Region, who sent his wife, with whom he has six children, to a shrine to be cured of an ailment will forever regret going to the shrine at all. He lost his wife to the fetish priest.
The priest was alleged to have constantly raped the woman in front of his gods. He impregnated her and named the child Atingah, after one of the fetishes he had brought from Akatsi.
That aside, he also subjected the woman to constant molestation over the upkeep of Atingah.
Ironically, when the family of the victim, Madam Yaa Annua, 35, brought pressure to bear on the priest, he rushed to the police to report that he was being threatened by the woman’s family.
Upon investigation, the tables turned and the case has been referred to the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service in Sekondi for further investigation.
Narrating her story to The Mirror, Yaa Annua said when her husband went to demand her release after the first instance of rape in front of the shrine, the priest defiantly told her husband that he was not ready to release her to him but if he insisted, he should go to the bush and catch 37 giant spiders to pacify the gods before she could be released to him.
According to Yaa Annua, she was taken to the priest in a very bad state and was later cured after continuous treatment for more than a year.
“I regained my strength and one morning the priest called me to the room where the gods were kept and gave me some concoction to swallow. I did that and in the evening he called me again. I went because I thought it was for the same medication,” she said with much regret.
She said when she got to the room, he told her that she had become so nice that he had developed interest in her. She said she told him that the man who brought her to him was her husband and they have six children the priest was aware of so she could not do that to her.
“Before I could finish my statement, he pounced on me, took off my clothes and forcibly had sex with me and warned me that there were implications if I should escape from his custody,” she added.
In tears, she said, “Forcibly having sex with me became a daily occurrence until I became pregnant. When I told my husband that the priest had impregnated me, he left and I don’t know where he is now. Presently, I have seven children to take care of, including Atingah.”
Asked if she did not call for help when the priest was raping her, she said the shrines were located quite a distance from where help could come from and that she reported to the other wives of the priest but they only consoled her.
She said the sad part of the situation was that after she delivered, the priest refused to cater for her and the child and insisted that the child’s name should remain Atingah.
“When I asked for help to take care of the child, he did not even listen but subjected me to serious beating,” she added.