Adventist Pastor in Ghana Arrested for Sexual Abuse of a Child

By AT News Team, Feb. 3, 2015:   Pastor Joseph W. Mensah of Ekumfi Eyisam, Ghana, was arrested in late January according to an official statement of the Ghana National Police and reports in the news media in the country. Adventist Today could not confirm that he was employed by the denomination because the Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook no longer lists licensed ministers and therefore leaves a significant segment of denominational employees unidentified in the reference work.

Police Inspector Samuel Amoaka told the court that he took a 14-year-old girl to Saltpond Government Hospital. He stated that the girl had lived with the pastor and his wife since October, 2014, at the request of her mother. The pastor’s wife, he said, was the girl’s teacher.

The hearing was in secret under Judge Kofi S. Ametewee on January 20 in the Cape Coast Circuit Court. The defense attorney ask for bail and the judge refused, but did not require a pleading from the defendant.

The police inspector testified that Mensah told him that the girl had told him that someone had attempted to have sexual relations with her at the time that she came to live in his home. Mensah said that because of this he sent her back to live with her mother, the inspector told the court. The girl told the inspector of specific occasions when she was living with the pastor and he had sexual relations with her.

The police statement indicated that an arraignment would be held in court on January 30. No further information has been posted on official Web sites or published in the news media in Ghana, but the pastor is evidently being held by authorities.