An Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court on Tuesday sentenced a 45-year-old businessman, Emeka Orisakwe, to life imprisonment thrice for defiling his three underaged children.
Justice Abiola Soladoye held that prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt the three-count charge bordering on sexual assault by penetration against the convict.
Soladoye said that the convict was a “wicked and pathological liar”.
She also berated the defendant’s immediate younger sister, the first defence witness (DW1), for tendering a medical report concerning the mental state of the defendant’s wife which did not correlate with the timing of the incident.
The judge described the witness’s evidence as unreliable, saying that it was a pack of lies tainted by deception to corrupt the minds of the survivors to lie before the court.
She said : “Children are very honest and I observed the three children who came to testify.
“This court could see that their aunt, who they stayed with after the incident, had been working on their brains to tell lies before this court.
“The children’s subsequent denial in court after they made statements at Satellite Police Station that their father messed around their vaginas with his fingers is an afterthought and very unfortunate.
“The children were taken away from the custody of their mother, and the sister-in-law painted lies in their minds.
“This court cannot be fooled. The DW1 is a liar and a wicked sister-in-law, whose evidence is self serving to save her brother from drowning.”
She said that a medical report on the mental state of the convict’s wife, which she tendered before the court, was dated Feb. 2, 2023.
“The sexual incident occurred years back, and in desperation, they went to cook up a medical report from Imo State that the defendant’s wife is mentally unstable.”
The judge further described as criminal attempts by both DW1 and the convict to suppress medical reports which revealed blunt forceful penetration on the minors’ private parts.
“The medical reports which were carried out on the three children and admitted in evidence before this court showed bruises on the inner surface, blunt and forceful penetration of the survivors’ vaginas.
“The medical examination revealed that the three children suffered various degrees of bruises from the sexual assault perpetrated by their biological father.
“This corroborated the statement of the survivors at the police station and the evidence given by the second prosecution witness (PW2), an officer from a child advocacy agency, that the brother of the survivors, told him that he once saw his father fingering his sister,” the judge said.
She held that subsequent denial by the convict was an afterthought which did not hold waters.
Soladoye found the defendant guilty of the three-count charge, and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each of the counts.
She, however, held that the prison terms should run concurrently.
The judge also ordered that the convict should have his name written in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
NAN reports that while prosecution team led by the state Deputy Director of Public Prosecution, Mr Olusola Soneye, called seven witnesses and tendered several documents to prove, defence called two witnesses.
Soneye told the court that Orisakwe committed the offences from January 2021 to July 2021 at No. 32 Ganiyat St., Monkey Village, Maza Maza, Lagos.
He said that the convict’s wife had found blood stains on the private part one of the survivors, who then informed her that her father “touched her bombom”.
“Upon further questioning, the mother called the two other children and they also confessed to her that their father had been assaulting them sexually whenever she was not at home,” he said.
The offence violates Section 261 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.
