12 years jail for Legon rapist

John Asamoah, the man who violently raped a 21-year-old female United States citizen, at the University of Ghana Legon campus was yesterday sent to 12 years imprisonment with hard labour.

The court presided over by Mr. Justice R. K. Apaloo, sentenced the accused after the seven-member jury unanimously found the accused guilty for raping the former Legon student who was on student exchange programme from an American university, last year.

Pronouncing the sentence, the judge stated that the accused has diagnosed to be unpredictable and that his moods were always on and off, adding that the court will therefore not be in the position to know when the sexual instinct of the convict will be activated since he has another rape case spending before the courts.

Justice Apaloo therefore said that he was imposing a custodian sentence to keep the convict far away from society, otherwise no female is safe.

The court noted that the ordeal the victim went through in the hands of the convict was brutalizing of the highest order ands that the victim's offence was that she was a female.

Justice Apaloo, in his presentation to the jurors said that the victim's evidence that she was raped was collaborated by a medical doctor at the Nyaho Clinic who testified that the victim had cuts in her private parts which indicated that either convict had a big phallus, or the he used force to gain access to her womanhood.

The accused in an unsorned statement on his defence had told the court that he had sex with the victim twice. However the court questioned why he failed to tell the court when and where he first had sex with the victim.

During the trial the court brought in a medical expert from the Accra Psychiatric Hospital in Asylum Down who testified that the accused knew what he was doing and was also aware of his conduct and what he was in court for.

The court concluded that the accused was very sane, and that insanity should not be invoked in this case.

The victim who was flown down from the United States of America to give her evidence two months ago, told a bewilded and packed court how the accused forcibly undressed her and threaten to insert a pen and sticks into her private part.

The Principal State Attorney led her in evidence in-chief Mrs. Merely Wood told the court that the victim feared for her life when she was ordered by the rapist to open her legs and she obliged and the accused began his sexual assaults on her.

Tears flowed uncontrollably, when she gave a vivid account of how the convict had sexual intercourse with her, while she scream and begged him to stop.

The victim had told the seven-member jury that while she was on her routine jogging she saw the accused person moving towards her, then he stepped in his path and knocked her down.

The victim said she was then dragged for about a hundred metres into the woods where the accused demanded that she should handover her money and Walkman radio/cassette player to him, but she could offer her wristwatch instead.