In two cases, the participants described their first sexual experiences as rapes. One was 

raped by a neighbor and the other by a trusted member of her church. 

We were attending the same church. . .  so that day he said I should not leave, but that I 

should wait for him and that he wanted to discuss something with me. And I asked him 

what he wanted to discuss with me and he said he wanted to ask me for a long time, and 

since he was my leader I could not say I was leaving and going home. There were three 

of us. He made the others leave so I was the only one left behind. . . When he came, he sat 

beside me and started holding me. I asked him what he was doing and that, please, I did 

not like that, and he said he loved me and that was what he wanted to ask me. And I said 

he should talk and that he should stop holding me, and at that point he struggled with me 

and had sex with me [Faith]. 

Most of the participants interviewed said that, so far, they had had sexual relationships 

with only one or two partners, and that their relationships lasted a long time.  A third of the girls 

reported having relationships lasting from 4 to 10 years with their first boyfriends.  

In summary, the girls in this community started to develop their adult lives including 

making a living and developing serious relationships during their mid teenage years. They 

fully expected to support themselves and to provide some of their children's support as well, as 

their activities indicate. The girls generally began working during their mid teens after they had 

dropped out of school, and their early moneymaking activities usually involved selling small 

items. Their family's limited resources, not pregnancy, was the main reason the girls cited for not 

continuing past junior secondary school. The participants generally aspired to move from selling 

small items to selling larger items in the market, developing capital to trade, or obtaining 

vocational jobs such as hair braiding or sewing. Some girls reportedly saved money from selling 

small items to attain these goals. Along with developing their means of subsistence, the girls 

developed ongoing relationships with boyfriends during this stage of their lives. 

The majority of the participants became sexually active at age 16 on average, after 

dropping out of school. Their first sexual partners were boyfriends either close to their age or 

between 5 to 12 years older, and were boys or men with whom they had an ongoing relationship. 

Both love and chop money contributions were as essential for a relationship to develop as they 

were in the broader Ghanaian society (Dinan, 1983). According to the girls' reports, parents 

discouraged sexual activity most often when girls were still in school. However, while the girls 

said that their parents did not want them to become pregnant too young, about half of the parents 

accepted the girls' sexual activities once the girls passed their mid teens. In addition, the parents 

advised or supervised the practice of serial monogamy or  sticking to one guy at a time.  Sexual 

violence by boyfriends against girls played a major role in the participants' early sexual 

initiation.  

About a third of the girls described their first sexual experience as date rape or rape by a 

nonboyfriend. The sugar daddy phenomenon where a girl has an older male who gives her 

money for sex and then a younger real boyfriend was not prominent among this group of 

participants.  Pressure and force from boyfriends, however, caused many girls to begin having 

sex before they wanted to. Those who were raped by a nonboyfriend were all living with parents 

at the time. However, the rapes did not appear to be the result of parental neglect, but occurred 

when the girls were doing their chores or participating in extracurricular activities.  

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