The victim said I was impotent

In a melodramatic fashion, 35-year-old, Yaw Anthony, also known as Yaw Borwere, caused a stir in a crowded courtroom when he appeared in the dock to make his defence in a rather unusual rhetoric that caused both laughter and anger.

The Tarkwa Circuit Court where he was charged exploded into near pandemonium when the accused said: "I had sex with her only to prove to her that I was not impotent".

Borwere who was opening his defence, having pleaded guilty with explanation to a charge of defiling an 11-year-old Class Two pupil, said the victim had been teasing him that he was hopelessly impotent and unable to sleep with a woman.

This explanation of the accused was found to be unreasonable by the court presided over by Mr. Samuel Obeng Diewuo, who sentenced him to 25 years imprisonment in hard labour.

Prosecuting, Chief Inspector Edward Paddy said Borwere, a galamsey operator and farmer, was resident in the same house with the victim at Ankobra, a suburb of Prestea in the Western Region.

He said at about a month ago, the victim's mother had information that the accused had been having sex with her daughter and also detected a change in the girl's appearance and demeanour.

Chief Paddy continued that acting on the information, the mother confronted the accused person, but it only resulted in a quarrel between the two.

According to the prosecutor, the mother later went to church and left the victim and her younger siblings in the house.

The accused person took advantage of the mother's absence and lured the victim to an uncompleted building in the bush which is about 200 metres away from their house to have sex with her. They were spotted by some neighbours who later reported the matter to the girl's mother. She in turn lodged a complaint with the police.

In the course of investigations, the victim led the police to the uncompleted building, where some cardboards on which they had sex were seen on the floor.

The victim further disclosed that the accused had defiled her on a number of occasions.