By Kamsi Anayo
The Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court on Monday sentenced a man, Ademola Oladimeji, to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting his three children.
The children were aged five, seven and nine.
Justice Abiola Soladoye held that the evidence of the respective prosecution witnesses was believable and truthful.
Soladoye, however, said their evidence established the offence of sexual assault by penetration and not defilement.
According to her, the evidence of the three survivors was corroborated by the investigative police officer and their mother.
She said, “Upon careful review of the evidence before the court, the children did not say their father inserted his penis into their ‘bum bum’; they only said he touched their ‘bum bum’.
“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.
“The wife of the defendant, in her testimony, said the children complained of pain in their private, and she was informed at the Mirabel Medical Centre that the children had been sexually assaulted.”
The judge added that the defendant was desperate to distance himself from the allegation by denying the offences.
“The court holds that there was penetration as oral and documentary evidence before the court pointed to the fact that defendant messed around with the purity of his three children,” Soladoye said.
She said the conduct of the defendant was despicable, morally corrupt, incestuous and against the order of nature.
The judge, who said 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 also convicted Mr Oladimeji of the fourth count charge of sexual assault by penetration and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each count.
The sentence, the judge held, would run concurrently.
Soladoye said the convict’s name will be registered in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
The state counsel, Olufunke Adegoke, called five witnesses to prove the case, while the convict testified as a sole witness.
