A Kumasi circuit court presided over by Mrs. Rita Agyeman-Badu has sentenced Afia Nkrumah aka Afia Serwaa, a petty trader who ordered her eight-year-old son to consume faeces, to three years' imprisonment in hard labour.
The court also sentenced her to a fine of GHC3000 or 250 penalty units, in default of which she will serve another three years in prison custody. The sentences, according to the court, were to run concurrently.
The court convicted the women after she pleaded guilty to the charge of protection from torture and degrading treatment, contrary to section 13(1) of the Children's Act 1998 (Act 560).
it wondered how the convict, a mother of seven and of sound mind, could subject her own son to that kind of treatment.
The court ordered that her three children, aged 12, eight and three, be sent to the Social Welfare until a suitable relative from their family volunteered to take care of them.
Mrs. Rita Agyeman-Badu said that the sentence would serve as a deterrent to others and hoped the convict would come out as a reform mother.
Presenting the facts of the case to the court, Police Chief Inspector P. Y. Bebli said the complainant in the case, John Addai, 18, was driver's mate living in the same vicinity with the suspect.
On August 4, 2012, at about 8: 30 p.m., one Victor Adomako-Bamfi, a witness in the case who also lives with the suspect in the same house, heard her shouting at the top of her voice, saying, “Swallow,swallow.”
Prosecution said the witness initially thought that the convict was giving her son medicine to take so he ignored it until he heard the victim crying persistently.
To his utter dismay, when the witness got to the scene, he saw the victim with a black polythene bag believed to have contained the human excreta, whilst the suspect was beating him with a wire, asking him to swallow what was in his mouth.
The complainant heard of the incident and confronted the suspect and rescued the victim from her.
The complainant was also attacked by the suspect and was wounded in the right eye. A complainant was lodged with the Suame Divisional Police and the suspect was arrested.
In her caution statement to the police, she denied the offence but was charged after careful investigation.
