Report domestic violence cases to DOVVSU - Inspector Attipoe

Accra , Nov 21, GNA - Inspector Who Knows Attipoe, Station Officer at the Domestic Violence Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, has urged the public to report cases of domestic violence to the Unit.

“We often save victims of such abuse with the help of informants,” he said.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Inspector Attipoe said considering the rate at which cases of domestic violence were being reported, it was obvious that people were becoming more aware of the need to protect their rights.

He said the unit had in the course of the year received over 2,400 cases.

Touching on the kinds of cases that the unit typically dealt with, he said, assault cases topped the list, with defilement and rape cases ranking next.

Throwing some more light on assault cases, Inspector Attipoe said whilst many of the complainants involved women who had been beaten up by their husbands or male partners, quite a number of men also reported being assaulted by their female partners.

“Sometimes cases are quite simple to handle. There are times however, when you have a complicated situation,” he said.

Inspector Attipoe said sometimes, a guardian or parent who is taking very good care of a child by providing good education among other things, might at the same time be applying harsh disciplinary methods to this same child, which could well be described as abuse.

He said in such instances, the perpetrators would be educated on more acceptable ways of guiding the child in order not to fall foul of the law.

With defilement and rape cases, Inspector Attipoe said more often than not the perpetrators were known to the victims.

He said a man with the intention of committing a sexual offence against a lady, would usually be close to her, adding that many victims of rape hardly suspected that the culprits were capable of committing such an acts.

On defilement cases, he said, typically the culprits in this scenario were often made up of familiar people who had very cordial relations with the children.

“Sometimes you have an adult man who jovially refers to a little kid as his wife. These kinds of situations sometimes lead to defilement,' he said.

Inspector Attipoe said children also had to be weary of adults, who often sent them on errands, adding that through these errands, these children sometimes got lured into getting defiled.

GNA