The judge
said the court was convinced that the allegation against the retired soldier,
Alabi Ibrahim had been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
The Ogun
State High Court sitting at Isabo, Abeokuta yesterday sentenced, Alabi Ibrahim,
to life imprisonment for raping his 10-year-old step-daughter and infecting her
with Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV.
In his judgement, Justice Abiodun Akinyemi said the accused faced a one-count charge of having sexual intercourse with the child. The offence, he said, was contrary to Section 3 of Child Rights Law.
Akinyemi said
further that the victim’s testimony, during cross examination, showed that she
was telling the truth and not tutored and that there was concrete evidence that
the victim was sexually assaulted, having also lost count on number of times
the convict assaulted her.
The judge
stated: “The court is convinced about the girl’s evidences; she is intelligent,
she remained consistent during cross examination. She does not seem to have
been tutored.
“I find her
evidence credible. Evidence of her mother corroborated her own.”
Akinyemi also
made reference to a medical report, which stated that the accused infected the
girl with HIV, stressing that the convict’s action had brought a permanent
stigma on the innocent girl.
The judge
explained that evidence of the medical report did not suggest that the girl had
earlier been sexually assaulted as alleged by the convict.
It would be
recalled that the convict committed the crime in 2012 in his home, where
himself, the victim and her mother lived.
It led to his
subsequent arrest and trial, following the intervention of Ogun State chapter
of Child Protection Network, CPN, an umbrella body of non-governmental
organisations, NGOs.
He nullified argument that there was no
eyewitness account on the sex allegation, pointing out that those who engaged
in rape didn’t employ the service of a cameraman, rather the witnesses are the
accused and the respondent.
‘I am fully
convinced that the accused had repeatedly had sex with the girl. I found the
accused guilty as charged. I find it not in my mind to show any mercy.
‘’The man is
shameless, sleeping with mother and child, what an abomination. People like him
need not to be in the society. I therefore sentence him to life imprisonment,
he should however be given access to reasonable treatment,’’ the judgement
declared
Earlier,
during the trial under case number AB/37/C/14, a medical report presented in
the court from the Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta, had established that the
convict had assaulted the girl sexually
and also infected her with HIV.
The report
tendered by Dr Seyi Adejobi read that
after the defilement, medical investigation showed that the girl’s
vagina had been penetrated, while blood investigation also revealed that she
had HIV, while the convict blood sample also tested positive with HIV
Similarly,
the assaulted girl told the court that she had lost count of the number of
times her step daughter slept with her, saying that at the end of every sex,
the convict always threatened that she would die if she told anybody.
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