In Lagos State, one Ademola Oladimeji has been sentenced to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting his three children.
Oladimeji was convicted and sentenced by the Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court on Monday.
He was arraigned on charges bordering on defilement. The children were aged five, seven and nine.
Justice Abiola Soladoye asserted that the proof of the respective prosecution witnesses was genuine and truthful.
Soladoye, however, said their evidence established the offence of sexual assault by penetration and not defilement.
She stated that the evidence of the three survivors was substantiated by the investigative police officer and their mother.
She described the conduct of the defendant as despicable, morally corrupt, incestuous and against the order of nature.
She said, “Upon careful review of the evidence before the court, the children did not say their father inserted his penis into their ‘bum bum’; they only said he touched their ‘bum bum’.
“I observed the three of them. They did not lie against their father; they did not say he used his penis; he only used his fingers.
“The wife of the defendant, in her testimony, said the children complained of pain in their private, and she was informed at the Mirabel Medical Centre that the children had been sexually assaulted.”
The judge added that the defendant was desperate to distance himself from the allegation by denying the offences.
“The court holds that there was penetration as oral and documentary evidence before the court pointed to the fact that defendant messed around with the purity of his three children,” Ms Soladoye said.
The judge, who said the prosecution failed to establish the three-count bordering on defilement, thereafter changed it to sexual assault by penetration and convicted him on each of the counts.
She also convicted Oladimeji of the fourth count charge of sexual assault by penetration and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each count.
The sentence, the judge held, would run concurrently.
Soladoye said the convict’s name will be registered in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
The state counsel, Olufunke Adegoke, called five witnesses to prove the case, while the convict testified as a sole witness.
(NAN)
