Father sentenced to life imprisonment for defiling 8-year old daughter

Justice Rahman Oshodi of a Lagos Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, yesterday, sentenced 42-year-old Suleimon Usman to life imprisonment for defiling his daughter.

The judge sentenced him after he was found guilty as charged.

Lagos State government had arraigned Usman on two-count charge bordering on defilement of his two daughters, who were eight and five years respectively, at his No.2 Bale Street, Onisewo in Apapa area of Lagos State.

The defendant was 37 years when he committed that offence in 2018, while the survivors were eight and five years.

His offence contravened the provisions of section 137 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2015.

He had pleaded not guilty to the two counts charge.

Usman was first arraigned before Justice Sybil Nwaka, sometime in October 2019 before the judge was elevated to the Court of Appeal and the case file was reassigned to Justice Oshodi wherein he was re-arraigned on two counts charge.

He also pleaded not guilty to the two counts and the prosecution commenced trial.

During the trial, the prosecution called four witnesses, among which, was the first survivor, the eight-year-old, the Investigative Police Officer (IPO), the defendant’s wife and mother of the survivors, and a medical doctor from Mirabel Centre.

In her testimony, the survivor identified the defendant as her father and narrated how she was repeatedly defiled by the father.

She further testified of informing her school teacher, who is close to her mother.

She told the court that she did not tell her mother because the defendant had warned and threatened that she would die if she did so.

In her testimony, the defendant’s wife narrated how she discovered that her two daughters were defiled when she took them to the hospital.

She described their house, noted they all sleep in a room, adding that their parlour is not attached to the room.

Under cross examination, the survivor’s mother told the court that there was a night she met the defendant and her daughter in their parlour.

But the defendant told the court that his wife lied against him because he wanted to marry another wife and relocate her to the village.

However, Justice Oshodi in his judgment, yesterday, exonerated the defendant of the second charge.

The court held that the prosecution failed to prove the second charge against the defendant, as the second survivor did not testify to the second charge related to her defilement.

On count one, the court held that the testimony of the first survivor corroborated the medical doctor’s testimony.

The court said that he has considered the ingredients of the offences, the confessional statement, circumstantial evidence and the eyewitness account and therefore sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The judge also directed that his name be registered in the Sexual Offenders’ Register of Lagos State.

-The Guardian