Justice Abiola Soladoye of the Lagos State Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court yesterday sentenced a man, Ademola Oladimeji, to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting his three children, aged five, seven and nine.
Justice Soladoye handed down the verdict after holding that the evidence of the prosecution witnesses were believable and truthful.
The judge stated the conduct of the defendant was despicable, morally corrupt, incestuous and against the order of nature.
The judge, however, said the evidence of the witnesses only established the offence of sexual assault by penetration and not defilement.
She, therefore, sentenced the convict to life imprisonment on each of the four-count charge of sexual assault by penetration brought against him.
The sentence, the judge held, would run concurrently.
Justice Soladoye also ordered that the convict’s name be listed in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
The state counsel, Mrs Olufunke Adegoke, called five witnesses to prove its case while the convict testified as a sole witness.
In judgment, the judge held that the evidence of the three survivors was corroborated by the investigative police officer and their mother.
She held, “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 about their father; they did not say he used his penis; he only used his fingers.’’
“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, and she was informed at the Mirabel Medical Centre that the children had been sexually assaulted,” the court held
Justice Soladoye held that the defendant was desperate to distance himself from the allegation by denying the offences.
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