The Delta State High Court sitting in Asaba and presided over by Honourable Justice Flora Ngozi Azinge, has sentenced a 28-year-old father, Amechi Ogo, to life imprisonment for raping his four-year-old daughter.
The defendant was arraigned on a charge of rape for having unlawful carnal of his child at Asaba on 31st May 2018, contrary to Section 218 of the Criminal Code Law of Delta State.
The prosecution led by the Director of Sexual Offences Unit, Ministry of Justice, Mrs P.U. Akamagwuna told the court that the defendant came home on a fateful day and demanded for sex from his wife. When his wife turned him down and left the house on an errand, the defendant forced himself on his four-year-old daughter. He was caught in the act by a neighbour and fled the scene.
The police subsequently arrested him. Defendant made a confessional statement which was tendered in court.
In his trial, defendant retracted the confessional statement and denied committing the offence.
Delivering judgement on Wednesday 1st February 2023, Honourable Justice Flora Ngozi Azinge held that the evidence of the four-year-old child and the witness, who caught him in the act, together with the defendant?s confessional statement, proved beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the offence.
Justice Azinge held that the defence raised in the confessional statement of the Defendant, to the effect that he lost all sense of reasoning after a native doctor laid hands on him and directed him to have sex with any woman he saw, was untenable and an afterthought.
She described the defendant as a paedophile, whose conduct in raping his own daughter was callous, animalistic, barbaric and against the laws of God.
She stated that society needed to be protected from persons like the defendant who prey on children.
The court thereafter sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment.
Speaking to a newsman after the judgement, Mrs P. U. Akamagwuna said that the State Ministry of Justice will continue to aggressively prosecute all sex-related offenders in line with the ministry?s zero-tolerance policy for such heinous crimes.
It will be recalled that the Sexual Offences Unit of the Ministry of Justice had previously recorded three judgements in sex-related offences cases in this current legal year.
The convict has since been registered in the Delta State Sex Offenders Register and his details has been uploaded to the national database.