TEFLE, Ghana -- Just 12 years old, with a shy smile, bare feet and simple printed cloth that serves as her only clothing, Abla Kotor has begun a life of servitude and atonement for a crime she did not commit. For now her duties mostly involve sweeping the dirt courtyard of a local fetish priest, a spiritual intermediary between worshipers and deities of the area's traditional religion, ju-ju. But her responsibilities will grow to include providing sexual favors to the priest who has become her master.

In the meantime, she must learn to cook and to farm crops of yam, manioc and corn. And, as is typical in such case, she will be denied the fruits of her hard labor. Instead the often wretchedly poor families of these young women are expected to send food to feed them.

Without even knowing it, Miss Kotor has joined a community of several thousand female ritual slaves in this corner of southeastern Ghana. Slavery based on racial and religious differences stubbornly endures in a few places in Africa, with the Sudan and Mauritania often accused by human rights groups of tolerating it. But in this area of isolated farming villages strung along the banks of the Volta River a lesser known form of bondage still thrives. Here, even today, girls known as trocosi in the Ewe language, or slaves of the gods, are routinely given by their families to work as slaves in religious shrines as a way of appeasing the gods for crimes committed by relatives.

Ghanaians say the practice stems from a world view that sees justice and punishment in communal rather than individual terms; an individual who has no connection to a crime may be punished to spare others. Similarly, when one person's offense goes unpunished, it is believed, vengeance may be wreaked upon an entire community.

According to the tradition, which dates at least as far back as the 17th century and also extends into neighboring Togo, Benin and southwestern Nigeria, the trocosi must begin their bondage as virgins. Then, once given to a priest, a girl is considered his property, and can be freed only by him, in which case her family must replace her with a new young girl. To ensure that the gods remain appeased, this process is repeated for a serious crime, with families giving up generation after generation of girls in perpetual atonement.

"The fact is that when a fetish priest feels that the woman is no longer appealing, because she has borne many children and has been worked so hard, he lets her go, at which time she must be replaced by another girl," said Mark Wisdom, a local Baptist preacher who began campaigning against the practice 16 years ago. "And this continues in perpetuity."

Resplendent in his white cloth and woven cap, holding a ceremonial scythe and burnished staff and wearing the long braided rope necklace that is the trademark of an Ewe priest, Kotinuor Akorli explains that Miss Kotor has been given to him to atone for a rape. "Not just any rape," he explained, with Miss Kotor listening silently, perhaps hearing the story for the first time, but the sex her father forced a young niece to engage in years ago. "That act resulted in Miss Kotor's birth," the priest said.

With wrinkled village elders nodding approvingly, Kotinuor rejected the view that Miss Kotor's case represented an absurdly cruel example of punishing the victim. The priest, seated on a simple wooden stool at the edge of his dirt-floored shrine -- little more than a collection of mud huts -- explained it in terms of his religion. "To you this may seem like a miscarriage of justice, but the girl will have to atone," Kotinuor said, speaking through an interpreter. "It is the spirit, our fetish, who has made things work this way, and only he can explain."

Because of the religious nature of the practice, many Ghanaians who advocate abolishment of trocosi bondage are skeptical that a new law will end it. Individuals and private groups in Ghana have had some success in persuading priests to stop the practice, usually after discussions with paramount chiefs and other prominent local people. One local group, International Needs, has found that by donating 10 cows and a bull, building a corral for the priest and giving cash to their villages, they have been able to convince a number of shrines to end the practice of ritual bondage. The group provides schooling for girls who are freed and teaches skills like sewing and knitting to the older women. Still, even after the women are freed, the group says, their families superstitious fear of retribution feel compelled to take them back.

Ghanaian Related Web Sites:
Permanent Mission of Ghana to the United Nations - http://www.undp.org/missions/ghana/