An Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court has sentenced a man, Ademola Oladimeji to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting his three children, aged five, seven and nine.
Delivering judgment after his trial yesterday, Justice Abiola Soladoye held that the evidence of the respective prosecution witnesses were “believable and truthful”.
Justice Soladoye said the conduct of the defendant was despicable, morally corrupt, incestuous and against the order of nature.
The judge said the evidence of the three survivors was corroborated with that of the investigative police officer (IPO) and the mother of the survivors.
She held that the evidence established the offence of sexual assault by penetration and not defilement.
“Upon careful review of the evidence before the court, the children did not say their father inserted his penis into their ‘bumbum’. They said he touched their ‘bumbum’.
“I observed the three of them. They did not lie against their father. They did not say he used his penis, he only used his fingers”.
According to the trial judge, “the children gave unshaken testimonies on how their father fiddled with their innocence multiple times by inserting his fingers into their vaginas.
“The wife of the defendant, in her testimony said the children complained of pain in their private parts and she was informed at the Mirabe Medical Centre that the children had been sexually assaulted”.
The judge held that the defendant was desperate to distance himself from the allegation by denying the offences.
Justice Soladoye said she does not believe the narration of the father of the survivors.
Though the judge noted that the defendant denied fiddling with his daughters, she said that his testimony did not add up.
“His narration shows how desperate he is to get out of the charge against his own children.
“The court holds that there was penetration”, the judge said adding “oral and documentary evidence before the court pointed to the fact that the defendant messed around with the purity of his three children”.
The judge held that the prosecution failed to establish the three-count bordering on defilement, thereafter changed it to sexual assault by penetration and convicted him on each of the counts.
She convicted Oladimeji of the fourth count charge of sexual assault by penetration and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each count. She said the sentence would run concurrently.
Soladoye said that the name of the convict should be registered in the Lagos State Sexual offences Register.
