You don’t hide behind bipolar and mental bereavement and challenges to commit crime – Lawyer Maurice Ampaw

A Ghanaian lawyer and lecturer, Lawyer Maurice Ampaw has explained and educated the general public about laws relating to sharing pornographic materials, nude contents and  immoral acts on social media.

In a phone-in interview with the host of the Drive with the Area Gang, Nana Lion on Pluzz fm on May 11, 2022, Lawyer Ampaw said that anything nude or pornographic on social media are all criminal by law as section 277 of the Criminal offense Act and also Cyber law has it that pornographic materials are all criminal.

“I think that the law has always been that, anything nude, anything that offend the responsibilities of Ghanaians, anything that displays profane material, immoral material, pornographic material, they are all criminalize by our law, we should even look at section 272, 277 of our criminal offenses, we should simply look at the Cyber laws of the land, pornographic materials are all criminal in nature” he said.

Lawyer Ampaw expressed his worried saying that, some of them call for the arrest of perpetrators of this crime and it looks like the Inspector General of Police is not interested, Civil society are not interested, parents are not worried, men of God in this country are not worried and the media is also enjoying. This he said is giving signal to the outside world that, Ghana condones and encourages such act.

He said this in relation to an incidence that occurred recently on social media where Abena Korkor, a Ghanaian media personality and a mental health advocate shared her nude photos on Twitter which saw Ghanaians talking about it. Lawyer Ampaw stated that, if one is  bipolar or having mental challenges doesn’t mean one should hide behind that and commit a crime.

“You don’t hide behind bipolar and mental bereavement and challenges to commit crime, if you commit a crime, you’re first arrested” he added. He went on to say that, “if Abena Korkor is mad, we are sitting down and all the time she’s showing his nude and then we’re saying that there’s nothing that can be done because she’s mad, so then when people go nude, they’ll also say madness and this is becoming on becoming”.

(Source: Pluzz FM)