ABEOKUTA— An Ogun State High Court sitting at
Isabo, Abeokuta, yesterday sentenced a retired
soldier, 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.
The judge said the court was convinced that the
allegation against the accused had been proved
beyond reasonable doubt.
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.
Vanguard
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