“For the perpetrator, rape lasts just a matter of minutes. For the victim, it never stops.”
― Fredrik Backman
The Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos State, has sentenced a man, Ugochukwu Onuoha, to life imprisonment for defiling a five-year-old girl, his neighbour’s daughter.
The presiding judge, Justice Rahman Oshodi, in a judgement delivered on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, declared that the prosecution established beyond reasonable doubt, the charge of defilement against Onuoha.
Justice Oshodi said the survivor was a minor at the time of the incident.
He said the survivor’s mother’s evidence that Onuoha apologised and promised not to do it again was an admission which corroborated the prosecutrix’s evidence.
The judge said: “There is abundant evidence that the defendant committed the crime.
“I believed the prosecutrix when she testified before me as she was resolute that it was the defendant that penetrated her vagina with his penis.
“She maintained this during cross-examination and gave further details to embellish her evidence in chief.
“The evidence shows that the defendant had sexual intercourse with the victim, who, to his knowledge, was a child.”
The judge, thereafter, found Onuoha guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Justice Oshodi further held that the medical evidence showed short and long-term impacts on the victim as the sexual intercourse he had with the survivor could cause structural damage to the vagina, the uterus, and other surrounding organs.
He also ordered that the convict’s name be registered in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
