For raping his 10-year-old stepdaughter, one Prophet, Anwana Peter Essien has been sentenced to 21 years of pedophilic break in prison.
The self-confessed prophet put the blame on the ever-ubiquitous devil while pleading that a demon pushed him in the midnight to forcefully remove the clothes of his step-daughter and have unlawful carnal knowledge of the hapless JSS One student on August 9, 2019.
The victim’s mother had brought her and her younger sister to spend the holiday with their stepfather in his residence at Itiam Street, Uyo.
According to the 37-year-old convict: “I know the victim of this case. She is my wife’s daughter. In the month of August 2019, she came to my house at Itiam Street, Uyo. I gave her food and she ate then after eating, I told her to remove her clothes but she refused. From there, I forced her and removed her clothes.
“I was the one that used my hand and removed my penis and forcefully inserted it into her vagina and had canal knowledge of her. It is true that when I tried to put my penis inside her vagina, my penis was not able to enter her vagina. When I was having sex with her, I did not use any condom.”
In his judgement, Hon. Justice Okon Okon of a High Court of Justice Akwa Ibom State, Uyo, “the confession was direct, positive and unequivocal that the randy stepfather had sexual intercourse with his stepdaughter.”
Justice Okon further held: “The parameters established for the proof of rape, have all been satisfied by the evidence of the prosecution witnesses, including the victim and the medical doctor who examined her, fortified by the confessional statement voluntarily made by the accused person himself.
“It is most despicable and depressing, that the supposed man of God overpowered and defiled an innocent child of about ten years who is incidentally, his own stepdaughter.”
His lordship also described the conduct as “bizarre and degrading” adding that “the defendant lacks any claim of moral rectitude having thrown overboard, the limits of his liberties by shamelessly stripping and polluting the dignity, chastity and sanctity of his stepdaughter’s body and totally disregarding her underage status.”
Likewise, Hon. Justice Sedoten Ogunsanya of the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja, recently sentenced a 41-year-old teacher, Chukwu Ndubuisi, to life imprisonment for defiling a six-year-old pupil of Mind Builders School.
Justice Ogunsanya handed down the sentence to Ndubuisi for forcing penetration on the minor, while noting that, the fact, circumstances and quality of evidence against the defendant were compelling. The crime was committed the offence in June 2016.
The court disclosed that the survivor opened up to her mother when she (her mother) told her about a seven-year-old girl that was defiled and killed and which went viral. It was at that point that the survivor whispered to her mother and said she wanted to discuss something with her. She then proceeded to narrate her experience but pleaded with her mother not to tell her father and brother.
The court was told how the defendant usually sends the survivor’s friend to call her and that the first time the defendant defiled her was in the female toilet and that the second time was in the art room.
According to the minor, the convict would sometimes ask her to remove her uniform and then put his “bumbum” into her “bumbum.” At another time he called her into the art room, put her on the table, parted her panties and “put his thing into my thing.”
The survivor told the court that when the convict is finished, he would clean her up with tissue paper. Her mother had to intimate her husband, following which they went to their daughter’s school but the art teacher was not in school.
When the parents then reported the matter at Omole Police station following which the matter was investigated and a test conducted on the little girl at Ikosi Health Centre, it was discovered that she had been defiled. Consequently, the Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency, DSVA took up the case.
The judge held that the account of the survivor and that of her mother were uncontroverted, corroborated each other and that they gave a good account of the assault. She equally noted that the convict had unhindered access to the child and defiled her several times.
Again, she dismissed the submission by defence witnesses to the effect that the incident was not recorded on the school’s CCTV and upheld the result of the test conducted at the Mirabel Centre which showed that the survivor had torn hymen and reddish vulva and that there was evidence of forceful penetration.
As this frightening shadow pandemic continues to rise, ThisDay Newspaper Editorial of 20 January 2023 is worth restating.
Tackling The Rising Rape Cases
Perpetrators of the crime must be severely and swiftly sanctioned
It must worry the Nigerian authorities that rape has assumed epidemic proportions. In school premises, hospital wards, places of worship, corporate and government offices and playgrounds, no place is sacred for these predators. While rape, the act of sexual assault against a person (male or female) comes in different forms, the most common in our country is against girls and women.
Rape is a violation of the most demeaning kind that scars many victims for life. But having created a society in which the seemingly strong are seeking ways to display their superiority over ‘weaker’ people, rape may be a more blatant manifestation of a deeper deviation in our social psychology. But no society should condone rape which regrettably has become a serious social problem today.
Accurate statistics of victims are difficult to come by, essentially because in our country, insensitivity, and the fear of stigma (or persecution) discourage targets of sexual violence from formalising the reports of incidents. This reluctance, however, has only contributed to the rise in a culture of impunity on the part of the perpetrators. The policy brief of the National Crime and Safety Survey once highlighted the prevalence of sexual violence and the fact that our society seemed to be living in denial about the issue.
The study particularly revealed that victims of rape hardly lodge reports for fear that their cases would not be treated seriously, that they would be stigmatised or that corruption would hinder effective investigation by the police. Even though human rights violations of this nature occur everywhere in the world, as the sick, the evil and the deranged exist in all societies, the only way citizens can feel safe and secure is where the response to crime is swift, efficient, and effective. That is what the current situation demands from the relevant authorities.
A non-governmental organisation, Women at Risk International Foundation (WARIF), in collaboration with the United States Consulate General, Lagos, recently called for an end to rape, sexual violence and trafficking of women through a three-kilometre walk along the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge. “Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is a human rights violation with detrimental impacts on victims, survivors, families, communities, and societies,” says WARIF founder, Kemi DaSilva-Ibru. “In Nigeria, 33 per cent of women and girls aged between 15 and 49 have experienced physical and or sexual abuse in their lifetime.”
To effectively tackle the menace, our courts must be more proactive and stringent in applying sanctions, as some of the verdicts, for the few that have been successfully prosecuted, were ridiculous. Our private network providers should readily donate helplines with free calls for victims of violence, while our hospitals and the legal profession should be prepared to offer pro bono services to the victims. However, society also needs to be alive to its responsibility. A point of safe, protective, and comforting recourse must exist for victims of sexual violence to address their immediate needs as well as to enable them to summon the courage to pursue the ends of justice.
We call on the relevant authorities to devise effective measures and strategies to checkmate the growing menace of sexual assaults across the country. While better training on a wider scale, diligent prosecution and swift and exemplary sanctions would certainly send a strong signal to the perpetrators to desist, the media remains a necessary partner in sustained efforts to curb these wanton acts of evil.
