Sunday school teacher jailed 10 years for defilement

Kumasi, May 11, GNA - A 23-year-old labourer who claimed to be a Sunday school teacher of the Church of Pentecost branch at Asafo in Kumasi, has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by a Kumasi Circuit court for having anal sex with an eight-year-old girl.

Akwasi Emmanuel who was convicted on his own plea, caused uncontrollable laughter at the court when after admitting the offence, confessed that it was the devil who tempted him into the act, ostensibly to earn the sympathy of the court.

Police Chief Inspector Mathew Asante, prosecuting told the court presided over by Mr Ernest Yao Obimpeh that the victim who lived with her senior brother at Amakom in Kumasi did not return home on the night of March 17 this year.

He said the absence of her sister alarmed his brother, Samuel Tetteh, a taxi driver and complainant in the case, when he returned from work that night and therefore; thinking that her little sister was missing mounted a search for her but to no avail.

The prosecution said after reporting the case to the Asokwa police, the girl returned the next morning but looked dull and tired. Police Chief Inspector Asante said when her senior brother quizzed about where she had been the previous night; the victim confessed that she was one of the crowds that listened to the accused who was engaged in an open-air preaching at Asafo.

He said the victim was reported to have followed the accused on his request to a certain house at Asafo where the accused asked her to sit on a wooden bench in front of the house while he entered to collect something for her.

Police Chief Inspector Asante said the victim who was then very tired, slept on the bench in no time but woke up in the middle of the night only to find the accused lying beside her and both of them were half-naked.

The prosecution said to her horror and amazement, she also experienced a sharp pain in her anus, probably by the ordeal and she started wailing in pain and pleaded with the accused to stop to which he obliged fearing that the victim's cries might attract attention. He the accused was arrested and after a medical report had proved the act was prosecuted.