SEXUAL SLAVERY IN GHANA: How a Novel Kidnapping/Assault Case Walking into My Courtroom
Dolly grew up in rural southern Ghana, living in her family’s compound near the center of the village. She was the oldest of three children in a moderately comfortable household. She had finished high school and had hopes for a bright future; soon she would marry the young Christian man from the city who had shown an interest in her over the past year.
One day while in the courtyard hand-washing clothes, she heard the sound of a diesel- engine Mercedes pull up out in the street, and then a loud banging on the compound door. Hardly had she unlatched the door when it was pushed open in her face, and powerful hands grasped her by the arms. Two strong men, one of them a complete stranger, the other whom she recognized from the village, pushed her toward the idling car, and she only had time to shout out once before she found herself being shoved into the trunk of the car. Her screams were stifled by the thud of the trunk door slamming. During the brief drive in darkness, she cried repeatedly for her parents to save her.
What her parents had never dared tell her, out of shame, was that since she was a little girl she had been promised to the local shaman as atonement for a family debt, a debt of such proportion that, according to the tradition of Trokosi, only the delivery of the family’s first-born daughter can appease the gods. In the Ewe language the word Trokosi loosly translates as “slave to the gods,” or “wife of the gods” and the tradition encourages the village shaman to consummate the marriage between the girl and the gods. The village shaman in Dolly’s village was an unwashed, gnarly little man of advanced age, eager to play the mediator to the gods when her time came. After he had tired of using her as his sex slave, he would make her his household servant, the lowest, most abject member in the village hierarchy.
Twice — when she first reached puberty and then three years later — her parents had begged the shaman for a reprieve and paid a comparatively large ransom to forestall the moment when he should finally call in the debt and take possession of her. Her parents had recognized that their daughter was very gifted and had hoped that by periodic payments, they could put off the inevitable until the old man lost interest — but such a man never loses interest. He had seen her recently at the market. When the family was unable to borrow any more for another bribe, he had ordered his henchmen to collect the debt and not to bother being too delicate about it.
* * *
I had been an immigration judge in Philadelphia for less than a year when Dolly walked into my courtroom in 1998. Dolly’s case presented a new theory of persecution in asylum law, and it was therefore the kind of case that every lawyer and judge hopes to run across: a case of first impression.
What is a case of first impression? It is a new animal, either a new theory of law, or a new set of facts which the existing theories haven’t had a chance to grapple with before. It is the type of case that can make a lawyer’s career, and, when journalists come sniffing around, it can even make the evening news, something that all ego-tripping lawyers yearn for.
Dolly was very lucky to find a conscientious female lawyer who was a seasoned member of the immigration bar. Then, due to a fortuitous conjunction of the planets, her case found its way into my courtroom. A prosecutor was assigned who, once all of the facts about Dolly’s case became known, also chipped in and worked with us to find a solution to the poor woman’s dilemma.
Dolly would be the only witness in her case. The law allows that asylum can be granted based upon the applicant’s testimony alone, as long as it is believable, internally consistent, and withstands the test of cross-examination. It’s not the type of case we like to see, where everything has to ride or fall on the poor applicant’s testimony alone. Sometimes, a person may be telling the truth but might be so intimidated by the whole process that (s)he gets rattled and doesn’t sound believable. On the other hand, some of the most undeserving people are very convincing, colorful liars, who can concoct a story out of thin air, replete with vivid details that move the heart. Especially for a case of first impression such as this, it would have been better if someone else could have come forward as a witness to corroborate what had happened to poor Dolly, but there was no one else.
I set the matter down for a full hearing on my calendar, and Dolly and her lawyer left the court. And I thought long and hard about the case. I had been handling asylum cases, as an attorney, from all over the world for a dozen years. I had seen almost everything under the sun, but this case was something new, presenting a new quality of perversity in the realm of human affairs. It was hard to imagine that in today’s world this kind of institutionalized sexual slavery could exist — and with the victim’s family participating in her victimization.
Several months later, Dolly came back to court to tell her story. By now I’d had a chance to review the information her attorney had submitted about the practice of Trokosi in Ghana. There were numerous articles from reputable sources, including national Ghanaian newspapers. The evidence showed that the practice existed in rural parts of Ghana, Togo and Benin, that it was indeed as hideous in reality as Dolly had claimed, and that there had even been several failed attempts to pass a law in the Ghanaian legislature outlawing the practice. (It was finally outlawed in 1998 but enforcement is limited due to the strong cultural tradition that still pervades the practice). There was a Ghanaian NGO (non-governmental organization) that had representatives traveling the country roads, visiting villages and purchasing the young women’s freedom from the shamans in exchange for either several head of livestock or sometimes a combination of a cow and some cash. (Nowadays a simple Google search brings up dozens of articles about the practice, and the fact that it is still going strong more than twenty years after our hearing).
Half the battle for Dolly had been won — the record now confirmed that this practice existed, that its ramifications were indeed horrendous for the young victims, and that it might possibly have happened to the young woman in my courtroom. The second half of the battle was for Dolly to convince me, the adjudicator, that her particular story was true and that she hadn’t just concocted the whole thing. Her story had to make sense, it had to ring true, and she had to withstand the INS trial attorney’s attempts, through cross-examination, to shake her credibility.
The trial attorney was a young woman from China, Fen Lu, who had come to the US after college to attend law school, and then had remained in the U.S., becoming a citizen and landing a job with the INS. It is already an impressive feat to be able to learn a foreign language as an adult, but then to be able to go into court in the foreign country and conduct oral argument, day in and out, represents an incredible mastery of the language. I was impressed by Fen Lu’s courage and intelligence.
At the beginning of the hearing, her attitude about the case seemed to be one of routine skepticism. In her eyes, Dolly was probably just another fraud trying to play the system. But in the course of Dolly’s subdued but teary retelling of the story, I saw Fen Lu’s attitude change.
* * *
Dolly was sworn in and took her place in the witness box to my right. She testified in a subdued but steady voice about the events that had caused her to flee her village and brought her to my courtroom.
On that day that she was brought to the shaman by his henchmen, she was dragged from the car trunk into the village square and deposited under a giant baobab tree. A loud syncopated drumbeat terrified her. She looked about for an escape route, but it seemed like the whole village was there, surrounding her where she lay gasping for breath by a bonfire, next to the effigy of the god that the old shaman guarded. Several chickens squawked as they were sacrificed, and their blood was splattered over Dolly’s body. The shaman, a revolting man who wore foul animal skins and smelled like a cadaver, approached her and chanted the words of atonement to the gods, and upon his signal she was carried by the other women into his hut. In a last furtive glance at the villagers, many her neighbors, she saw her mother’s anguished eyes at the back of the crowd watching her.
Weeks later, after she had been starved and violated continuously, being offered no opportunity to bathe or recuperate, one of the elderly women took pity upon her and helped her to escape. The woman had been in the shaman’s household for twenty years and didn’t want to see another life destroyed in the same way.
“But do not return to your family,” the old woman admonished Dolly.
“Why not?”
“They will return you to the shaman, for otherwise they will still be in shame with a debt to pay. Come with me.” Under cover of darkness she was taken to the kindly woman’s family, who hid her in a shed in their compound until Dolly’s Christian man could be summoned from the city to rescue her.
The young man came and took her to the city, where he left her at the house of some of his Christian brethren. Thoughts of suicide now for Dolly, but she was talked out of going through with it by the kindly Christian family, who in time were able to raise money for her to purchase a fake passport, complete with fake visa, and provide passage to the U.S. She was given the address of other Christians living in Philadelphia to contact upon her arrival. But her visa, though it was convincing enough to get her on the plane departing Ghana, was discovered by an American immigration inspector at the Philadelphia airport to be an obvious fake. She was placed in INS detention in York, Pennsylvania, where an attorney heard of her plight and came to her legal assistance.
For me, one of the most convincing parts of Dolly’s story, and you really had to be there, was when she was asked what had happened to her Christian boyfriend who had helped get her out of the village to the city and to the church that eventually smuggled her out of Ghana. “He abandoned me.”
“Why?”
“I asked him, why I cannot stay with you?” Tears came to her eyes, and she was reluctant to continue.
“What did he say?”
“He say, ‘Woman, you are spoiled and unclean, I will never have you now.’”
I was able to form a conclusion as to Dolly’s credibility, based upon her demeanor and the way she related her story, including that last remark. I found that she was credible, that her story was true, and that she was therefore entitled to asylum and the protection of the U.S. government. I announced to the participants in the hearing that I intended to grant the case.
INS counsel Fen Lu agreed with me. She informed me that she would like some additional time to further research, through her own sources, the practice and nature of Trokosi. If her efforts bore out what Dolly was saying, then as a representative of the government she would join in a grant of the case.
For most judges, those would be welcome words. First, it meant that the humanitarian “right thing” was going to be done and that justice would be served. Secondly, it meant that since the government was not opposing the case, it would not be appealed, and therefore the suffering of the young woman would be put to rest earlier. An appeal to the severely backlogged Board of Immigration Appeals could take years to resolve. At least Dolly would leave the courtroom knowing that she wouldn’t have to expend any more time and money for lawyers, while living with the uncertainty of possible deportation back to the country where she had already suffered such indignities.
We returned to court a month later. Fen Lu informed the court that she had contacted individuals in the State Department on the Ghana desk, who in turn had contacted our embassy in Ghana. They had communicated with a Foreign Service officer whose bailiwick was human rights in Ghana and who had contributed to the Ghana section of the annual State Department world human rights report. Coincidentally, the year of our hearing was the first time the report included mention of the practice of Trokosi as a human rights concern. According to the Foreign Service officer in Ghana, the practice was one of the embassy’s greatest concerns of human rights violations in Ghana. Fen Lu thus felt that she had satisfied her duty to the government to fully investigate and prosecute the case, and since she was convinced that Dolly was telling the truth she could comfortably join with the court in a grant of asylum.
Because for me it was such an interesting case of first impression, I decided to take some time writing the decision in order to reflect and put the facts of the case and their application to the law in perspective. When I rendered my decision, the nation’s most influential immigration law journal, Interpreter Releases, published by West Law, learned about the ruling and published many of my remarks verbatim.
Then came the storm: it seems that Fen Lu’s superiors in the agency had not heard about the case until the article was circulated. One of the court’s clerks informed me that, when the case became known through the press, one of Fen Lu’s supervisors came to the clerk’s window, insisting upon seeing my decision, and in particular inquired about the appeal deadline. The thirty-day appeal deadline had just passed. My clerk told me she heard an explosion of rage coming from their offices across the hall. But there was nothing for Fen Lu’s superiors to do about the case but fume and steam and lament the missed opportunity to file an appeal of my decision, which would have kept Dolly in a state of cruel, uncertain limbo.
Frankly, if that case hadn’t received the national attention it did, then nothing further would ever have been said about it. The case shows how much the government loves the opportunity to shoot itself in the foot when it comes to publicity. I have often thought about what I would have done had I been Fen Lu’s supervisor and if I had been surprised by such an article about the case in a leading law journal. Here’s how I would have handled it. I would have called a press conference, inviting Dolly and her attorney and Fen Lu to share the podium. I would have made a grandstanding speech to the press, with TV cameras rolling, announcing “how proud we in the government are to be able to offer this poor abused woman the protection of the United States government, and how our attorneys such as Fen Lu are struggling every day in the trenches to do the right thing and assure that those who deserve protection are afforded it while those who are frauds and abuse the system are weeded out and sent home.” I would have recommended Fen Lu for a commendation, which would have given her a chance to visit Washington for a day and have a cheap lunch at government expense and be awarded a medal by the Attorney General. Our government would thus be reported in the press as upholding our sacred tradition of offering refugee to the truly repressed and destitute.
But I suppose that makes too much sense.
(from My Trials: Inside America’s Deportation Factories, by Judge Paul Grussendorf)