The married woman who wanted a child
In 2018, a woman and her husband walked into Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre at Gbawe, in Accra, to seek the healing hand of a man.
Efua Baiden, a 34-year-old businesswoman (not her real identity), and her husband were optimistic about finding a solution to their problem. This solution, they hoped, would in turn enhance and give more meaning to their seven-year-old marriage. But they would learn—rather too late—that their move was an ill-fated exercise of faith because they swallowed a poisonous bait on their first date with the man they considered a specialist.
For the sake of her privacy and that of the man with whom she went to the health facility, Efua does not want to disclose the traumatic experience that preceded and necessitated their visit to the health facility. To her, the entire episode has come to represent a gothic monument of regret erected in the museum of her mind. She wishes to forever shut that museum out of her life, but she is too concerned to shut up because of the fear that women like her might fall prey.
To resolve this internal conflict and avoid resurrecting a past that affected other parties, she requested that certain details should not be disclosed in her story. These details include a traumatic loss that destabilised her emotionally, prior to the visit to Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre.
But these and other health details were not hidden from the man whose medical expertise they sought in 2018, for a woman in labour, it is said, does not hide her private parts from the birth attendant.
Efua was not in labour. They had hoped that Efua would be able to go to the labour ward nine months after that visit. It would have been the second time in her life.
But, in the end, she did not go to the labour ward. She was taken to court.
The Predator and his trap
The man whose expertise they were going to seek, “Dr.” Jonathan Ohene Nkunim, is the CEO of Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre. He describes himself on social media as “a doctor by profession and a gosple [sic] minister by calling.”
There are videos of him singing in church, his ministration drawing worshipers to the altar to kneel and lift up their hands in total submission and supplication to God. Social media photos of Jonathan paint a picture of a loving husband and a doting father.
“Dr.” Jonathan’s professional profile is well promoted on his personal social media pages as well as the official page of Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre.
A Facebook photo of him sporting a white long-sleeved shirt, a black and silver waistcoat and a navy-blue necktie and with a stethoscope around his neck is captioned, “Ordained to Heal.” On his Instagram page, the same photo is captioned, “I may be a Doctor but the worshipper in me is who I really am.”
A business card with the name “Dr. Jonathan Ohene Nkunim” describes him as a Neuromuscular Specialist. The services he provides at Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre, as stated on the card, are: “General Diagnosis, Neuromuscular Therapy, Physio Therapy, Detoxification and Spine Straightening.” A notice at the entrance of his facility as well as the official Facebook page of Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre lists additional services as “Oriental Pulse Diagnosis, Herbal Options (Ghanaian and Chinese), Stroke Rehabilitation Therapy, Sports Massage, etc.”
In a letter he wrote in April 2021 requesting permission on behalf of a female client from her employers to enable her to undergo treatment, “Dr. Jonathan Ohene Nkunim” signed as the “head medical officer.”
Advertising his faith and celebrating his wife on social media present Jonathan Ohene Nkunim as a responsible family man in addition to his profession. But the image he portrays appears to contradict the true character of the man who varies his age depending on the age of the woman he’s dealing with.
The service which Efua and her husband went to seek is among a host of other unnamed health remedies offered at Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre.
“I wanted to have a baby, so I was introduced to him,” Efua recalls, adding that she initially had her doubts but the encouragement from her husband and the dire need for a child eclipsed those doubts.
At the facility, she was diagnosed in a way she had never seen before. The “doctor” held her hand, touched the back of her palm with his fingers and told her everything that was wrong with her. She said there appeared to be some accuracy in what he said.
“I won’t say 100%, but some were kind of accurate,” Efua said.
Beyond telling the “doctor” about the most private aspects of their reproductive health, the procedure “Dr” Jonathan recommended to be performed on Efua involved further prying into her privacy—her most private part.
“He mentioned that I had a problem with my cervix so I needed to do a procedure which would help me to conceive once a therapy had been done,” Efua recalled.
To her, this was not too big a deal if that could get her to conceive. What made her uncomfortable was what “Dr.” Jonathan said must precede the procedure. He told her that she had to be sexually aroused before he could perform the procedure.
Fortunately, she went with her husband. Unfortunately for the couple, however, the environment was not conducive for romance and arousal.
Nature’s Therapeutic Centre is a single room on the ground floor of a two-storey uncompleted building at Gbawe CP. Apart from the fading signage scrawled in green, nothing gives the indication that it is a health facility. When it is closed with the roofing sheet-like roller shutter, it looks more like a garage or warehouse than a health facility.
Inside, it is partitioned into three compartments. A third of the compartment serves as the reception and the waiting area. If you stood in the reception area with your back to the entrance, there is a door to the left which opens to the doctor’s consulting room. In the consulting room, there is a compartment to the right with another door. It opens into the treatment cubicle.
Much of the space in the treatment area is taken up by the only massage table. If Mr. Nkunim isn’t playing loud music in his consulting room—which he often does— a footstep, a cough, or whisper from any of the three compartments could be heard by anyone inside the facility.
Due to the presence of workers and patients at the stuffy facility, Efua and her husband did not think there was the needed privacy to get her aroused before the procedure started. And they told the “doctor”.
That did not stop Jonathan Ohene Nkunim from continuing with the treatment. In fact, that response from women, with or without their partners, was not new to him. It was a trap he set often, and his prey fell into it. It was his way of seeking their consent to intimately intrude and violate them.
Efua was not the first and would not be the last to fall into this trap.
“He inserted something like a probe—I don’t know what it was—into me and he kept doing his own thing there,” Efua recalled the procedure.
Efua said “Dr” Jonathan sent her husband out of the facility to “go and buy an iced block or something and I realised, though he didn’t penetrate, it was more like he was trying to have sex with you. He was playing with me down there, getting me aroused and I wasn’t feeling comfortable. According to him, that was the procedure.”
Efua later told her husband that she was not comfortable with the procedure, but she could not bring herself to give him all the details. Her husband encouraged her to continue since she had already started.
“Once you’ve started a procedure, at least, try and finish. You might never know what would work for you,” Efua remembered her husband telling her. And she continued.
The procedure to enable her to conceive focused more on what appeared like foreplay, and Efua was convinced the doctor was up to something when he started sending text messages to her phone in-between her visits to his facility.
“He started sending me messages like, trying to make advances towards me and I was kind of like, I mean, I mean where from this? I just came to your office for help,” Efua recounted her initial reaction.
While making sexual advances at Efua, Jonathan Ohene Nkunim gave her reason to believe she was at the right place and would conceive after the procedure.
“And, of course, he sounded convincing. He gave me all the facts I needed to know to prove that it would work,” Efua said.
The procedure did not work. What worked was Jonathan Ohene Nkunim’s alleged seduction. Efua said she lost her guard as the arousal and sexual advances continued.
She and Jonathan Ohene Nkunim later had an affair.
After the affair, her guilt-ridden conscience would not permit her to keep it away from her husband. When she confessed, her husband said he had forgiven her. However, Efua realised from his actions that his heart had forgiven her but his mind still battled with it. She was hoping he could overcome it but feared he might not.
Her fears were confirmed when a bailiff served her a divorce notice. The affair with “Dr” Jonathan Ohene Nkunim was the reason her husband wanted their marriage annulled.
And the court granted it.
Ohene Nkunim apologised to her, but she had wanted him to also apologise to her husband. She still thinks that might have helped to calm him down and perhaps save her marriage.
But he did not apologise to him.
“I don’t know whether he is a real doctor or a fake doctor…for him to take advantage of me and not even show any [remorse],” Efua said, regretting the decision to have subjected herself to the “treatment”. “It really affected me and as we speak, my marriage has broken down because of whatever happened with the doctor.”
After the affair and the collapse of Efua’s marriage, Ohene Nkunim told her that was not his nature. With Efua, however, he said he did not know what had come over him. He could just not resist her, the “Dr” gushed over his client. But Efua does not believe he is the person he claims he is. She suspects others may have fallen prey to the same predatory traps.
“He claimed he liked me and it just happened. But apparently, I’ve heard cases—I mean it’s a rumour I heard,” she said.
“I think I’m not the first victim, according to the rumour I heard. I believe that it is something he probably does to innocent women or wives, people who come seeking medical attention. I think it’s something