Justice Abiola Soladoye of the Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, on Monday, sentenced a father, Ademola Oladimeji, to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting his three children. The children were aged five, seven, and nine.
While delivering judgment, the judge held that the evidence of the prosecution witnesses were believable and truthful.
She also held that their evidence established the offence of sexual assault by penetration and not defilement
According to Justice Soladoye, the pieces of evidence of the three survivors were corroborated by the investigative police officer and their mother.
She said: “Upon a 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 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 Mirabel Medical Centre that the children had been sexually assaulted.”
The judge further said that the convict was desperate to distance himself from the allegation by denying the offences.
To the mind of this court, I do not believe his narration; though he denied fiddling with his daughters, his testimony did not add up.
“His narration shows how desperate he is to get out of the charge against his children.
“The court holds that there was penetration as oral and documentary evidence before the court pointed to the fact that the convict messed around with the purity of his three children,” the judge concluded.
Soladoye said the conduct of the convict 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 Oladimeji on the fourth count of sexual assault by penetration and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each count.
The judge held that the sentence would run concurrently.
Soladoye said that the name of the convict should be registered in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
The state counsel, Mrs Olufunke Adegoke, called five witnesses who testified against the convict to proof of its case while the convict testified as a sole witness.
