(Updated 9/20/16 at 3:46 p.m.) 23-year-old Emmanuel Otoo, a UCA student from Ghana, was arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault earlier this month. While Otoo attended UCA, he held scholarships funded by Holy Ghost Ministries.
Otoo was arrested after an unidentified UCA student reported being raped to UCAPD on Aug. 8.
Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland said Otoo has not been charged with anything.
(Update: Hiland said in a statement that no charges will be filed against Otoo for any crime based on lack of evidence.)
UCA Associate Vice President for Communications, Public Relations and Marketing Christina Madsen said Otoo is no longer a UCA student and that he cannot be on campus or in the university’s dorms.
Otoo, an international student, received much of his tuition money from Holy Ghost Ministries.
Holy Ghost Ministries is a non-profit organization founded by Senator Jason Rapert.
After hearing about the allegations against Otoo, Rapert released a statement. In the statement, Rapert expressed that he was sorry to hear about Otoo’s arrest and the possibility that he had committed a crime. He went on to explain the role of Holy Ghost Ministries in sponsoring Otoo and wrote about the circumstances surrounding his cessation of financial support for Otoo.
When contacted by The Echo, Rapert requested that questions be submitted via email. In his email, Rapert said, “We coordinated our scholarship assistance for Otoo at UCA through Holy Ghost Ministries. There were several donors that specifically wanted to assist with Emmanuel Otoo’s scholarship fund, but our family donated the vast majority of funds to assist with his college expenses until May 2016.”
Rapert said he and his family gave Otoo around $50,000 in financial assistance between January 2015 and May 2016.
On Rapert and Otoo’s social media accounts, several photos could be found of the two together.
Some promoted Otoo’s GoFundMe scholarship fund. Rapert said Holy Ghost Ministries has used GoFundMe in several of their projects.
On Dec. 20, 2015, Otoo posted a picture of Rapert’s wife with the caption “Happy birthday Mom. I appreciate your parenting. May God continue to bless you.”
In reference to the Facebook posts and Otoo referring to Rapert’s wife as his mother, Rapert said cultural values were the explanation.
“In Ghana, there is tremendous cultural respect given to elders and older generations. I have personally led eight teams to Ghana, West Africa for humanitarian missions and found that these terms of endearment are often given to those assisting their communities. We personally always try to treat people with great care and concern if we are helping them and had no problem with his terminology as we understood it is culturally relevant to his upbringing. We tried to make him feel welcome while we were assisting him at UCA,” Rapert said.
According to Rapert’s email, he has not been in contact with Otoo since May 2016.
“We supported all of his college expenses from January 2015 until January of 2016 when we informed UCA that Otoo was not performing well enough to continue receiving scholarship assistance,” Rapert said. “After a conference with UCA staff and Otoo, we were informed that UCA felt he would be improving and we agreed to another semester of assistance.”
Rapert said Otoo’s performance at UCA did not improve and that he told UCA in May 2016 that he and Holy Ghost Ministries would no longer be able to support Otoo.
After Otoo learned that Holy Ghost Ministries was cutting off its support, Rapert said Otoo told him he would “make trouble” for Rapert’s family if the ministry did not support him.
Rapert said he responded by telling Otoo such statements “were coercive and amounted to extortion.”
This, Rapert said, is when he “lost all confidence and trust in Otoo.”
He said his next steps were to tell UCA staff of his concerns and behavior.
“I am surprised that UCA did not support sending him back to Ghana in May of 2016 when we recommended it due to all the issues we had become aware of,” Rapert said.
The full text of Rapert’s email to The Echo can viewed below.
featured image via holyghostministries.com
