A Ghanaian Woman Love Turned A Battlefield: Harriet’s Ordeal

THE SILENT WOUNDS WOMEN CARRY

Harriet once imagined motherhood as a sanctuary, one that is built on love, tenderness and sacrifice, like many women, she believed that her deepest calling was to nature life, raising her children with the gentleness and devotion only a mother’s heart can hold. She yearned to help extend /prolong her husband's family line unfortunately, her life has a way of twisting even the purest intentions and for Harriet, the love she carried for her children became the very reason she walked through an unimaginable suffering.

It all began five months ago after enduring persistent physical and emotional abuse. She took a bold decision to leave her matrimonial home. She escaped for her life, taking refuge with her family sadly, she could not take her two children aged under 3 and 5 along with her since their father refused, but because, she loved them enough to keep them safe from the escalating violence in that moment, she walked away alone, hoping someday, she will reclaim her lovely children.

On Saturday night, her ex-husband called with the chilling news that the younger child was gravely ill. Upon hearing this, Harriet dropped everything that she was doing traveling through the night, her heart pounding with fear only a mother can feel but, when she eventually arrived both children were seen perfectly healthy and playing in the yard apparently, the sickness had been a lie crafted only to lure her back into the house for the grand-finally.

What followed was a night of terror, betrayal and cruelty that no woman should ever endure. According to Harriet, when she rejected his attempt at intimacy, her husband then admitted coldly that, indeed, he had deceived her to come so he could exterminate her.

What happened next was a cascade of violence and humiliation, a kind that leaves not only bruises on her skin but scars on her soul forever in fact, not only on the soul of Harriet but on the soul of every Ghanaian woman or girl child who watched that viral video.

To the extent that when neighbors intervene even when she pleaded, cried and yelled. When she reported the ongoing abuse to the Ghana police, absolutely nothing happened. Harriet's case was perceived as a joke, her suffering and dignity thrown under the table. Of course she did not know the name of any prominent person. Yes, like many, she had no connections.

Harriet’s ordeal is not just the story of one woman; it is the narrative of thousands of women and children. It is a description of a system that hears women’s screams and does absolutely nothing, a society that praises motherhood yet abandons mothers, a country where women give birth from love and raise boys into men only for some of those men to grow into the very source of their suffering.

Where did women go wrong? In truth, they did not. The wrong lies not in women but in a culture that teaches boys power instead of empathy, entitlement instead of responsibility, dominance instead of respect. The wrong lies in a system where the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit mandated to protect too often becomes a waiting room for help that never comes.

When Harriet knocked repeatedly on the doors of the police she met silence instead of protection and intervention how many more women would be broken before the system bends. How many more children would watch their mothers bleed before we admit that we have failed them as a nation we cannot claim to value life while turning away from the women who give life

Dear Gender Minister, Honorable Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, Ghanaian women are running out of places to survive. Most women have fought for fairness and justice in vain. It is nowhere to be found, not at work, home and certainly not in their own bedrooms and not even in the hands of the very children they bore, prayed over and sacrificed for, every man was born from the body of a woman yet too many women die at the hands of man.

We plead that you create a space where women like Harriet can leave breath and heal a space where justice is not a luxury but a right as it is. Until then fairness /justice will remain a stranger to the Ghanaian woman. May the nation remember that the womb that brings forth life should never be a graveyard of silence and suffering?

I ask you. Yes I mean you reading now, Do you think Ghanaian women will ever see justice and fairness? Well… we pray for Mercy and Grace… Where fear has lived too long and may you all learn at least that, a society that breaks its women breaks its future as Maya Angelou reminds us “each time a woman stands up for herself she stands up for all women” May we stand with Harriet before another woman must stand alone.