The victim’s mother in an emotion laden voice told the court that Adegboyega of Chrisland School twice introduced her daughter to sex at such a tender age.
Giving evidence as a prosecution witness on Wednesday before Justice Sybil Nwaka of Sexual Offences Court of Lagos High Court, Ikeja, said her daughter experienced all sorts of sexual abuse in the hands of the defendant to a degree that she as an adult had never experienced.
She said that not only that the defendant abused her baby, but he also threatened to kill her parents and everything that mattered to her, if she ever told anyone what he had been doing to her. Led in evidence by the state prosecution counsel, Mr. B. T Boye, the victim’s mother related, “On November 10, 2016, I picked my daughter up in school on a Thursday, took her to the rest room to urinate, pull her pant and casually said don’t let anybody touch your wee-wee, and the next thing I heard was ‘he put his wee-wee on me’.
” She added that she immediately called her daughter’s class teacher and informed her that her baby had been sexually abused, adding that she enquired from the teacher if anybody had been taking her out of the class and the teacher’s response was no.
The mother said she immediately called her husband, who was abroad and because he was not picking, she sent him an SMS, informing him of the development.
She also revealed that the next day, being a Friday, she took her child to school around 11.00 am and as they were entering the school, they saw the defendant, who defiled her daughter, and a cleaner who was passing by said to her, “The love between your daughter and this man is like this,” (the witness crossed her fourth fingers to demonstrate a sort of closeness.)
Testifying further, the mother of the victim said when she discussed the issue with her daughter’s class teacher and she said no one took her from her preschool class, she took the child to a paediatrician at Heritage Hospital in Badore Road, Ajah, where the doctor confirmed her fears, telling her about the state of her daughter’s vagina, that “there was redness and that her hymen had been damaged.”
She added, “I acted on this by getting the number of the alleged perpetrator from a close teacher, and I called him to warn him.
After introducing myself, I said, ‘I am calling you to say stop abusing and threatening my daughter.’ He replied, ‘I have heard what you said’.” Explaining that she had wished she recorded the conversation, she said she further told Adegboyega on the phone that “if you do not stop, I am going to report you,” but I was shocked when he responded that ‘even if you report, nobody would believe you,’ and in all truth, they did not.”
She said she was advised at that point by a fellow worshipper in her church to report the matter at the Office of Public Defender (OPD) where she was told the case would never be covered up. At the OPD, she was referred to Area F Police Command, Lagos where the matter was investigated.
Police investigation took them to the school a month later, where the police asked the little girl about the places the defendant was alleged to have carried out his abuse and the girl did identify the toilet and even the defendant’s desk.
Meanwhile, the mother also told the court of how her daughter was examined psychologically at Mirabel Centre, without her being present and later referred to DSVRT. She added that they even went to a psychologist from DSVRT. During cross examination by the counsel to the defendant, Mr. Olatunde Adejuyigbe, SAN, the witness maintained her stand that she was speaking the truth. When the counsel queried her on the choice of words used in the medical report as not explaining redness of the vagina as one of the findings in the medical examination, she responded that though she was not a medical doctor, she asked the doctor and it was explained that it meant redness and the document was signed by Dr. Ajayi Kolawole Odebiyi on November 11, 2016. She said she could not say how long her daughter was abused by the defendant but that her daughter said the accused abused her two times. The trial continues.
