Two get 30 years for defilement

An Accra Circuit Court yesterday sentenced two persons to a total of 30 years’ imprisonment for defiling two minors.

They are Paa Kwesi Antwi, 48, unemployed and James Debrah, 47, carpenter.

In the case of James, the prosecution held that he defiled his own daughter aged 12 at Mahia in Accra on September 25, 2015.

For Antwi, the prosecutor, Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbiri, said that he also defiled a 14-year-old minor on October 12, 2016, at Taifa, a suburb of Accra.

Although the two variously denied the charges at the initial stages of the trial, the court, presided over by Abena Oppong Adjin-Doku in separate judgments, found them guilty and jailed them 15 years’ each to serve as a deterrent to others.

George Asamaney, lawyer for Antwi, said his client had shown remorse and should not be given harsh sentence.

He asserted that it had been proven that people who were kept so long in prisons do not actually reform.

The prosecution said that the complainant and James were married but separated two years ago but the complainant took custody of their four children.

In December 2014, the victim and her two siblings visited the convict for holidays and that when they were going to bed, James asked her daughter to remove her dress and gave her a cloth to cover herself.

They both slept on the same bed while the victim’s siblings slept on the floor.

The convict then had sex with the victim and cleaned her vagina with a toilet roll.

James continuously took the victim to his house to have sex with her.

On the said day, the complainant became suspicious of the girl’s behaviour when she returns from the convict’s house and questioned her.

She narrated her ordeal to her mother leading to the arrest of James.

Antwi, on the other hand, also lived with the victim in the same vicinity.

The convict, as a result, told the siblings aged between 4 and 9 to take the lead while he asked the victim to run some errands for him in his house.

Antwi demanded to have sex with the victim, but she planned to tell the mother, a move which angered the convict who threatened to kill her and the siblings through some gangsters.

On February 26, 2016, the convict laid ambush at the junction that leads to the victim’s school.

When she got there, Antwi told the siblings of the victim to take the lead to school; he took the victim home and inserted his fingers into her vagina.

Antwi, on June 2016, had sexual intercourse with the victim.