An alleged rape victim who turned down justice from the law court and refused to cooperate with the court has been arrested and placed in police custody.
The woman who is 30 years old was said to have been sedated by her sister’s boyfriend, a pharmacist, Patrick Afun who then had sex with her while she was unconscious.
The sex act was alleged to have taken place in the evening of March 22, 2019, at the official residence of the pharmacist at the St Anthony Hospital in Dzodze in the Volta Region after they had dinner together.
Background
A Ho High Court, presided by Mr George Buadi was told at an earlier hearing that the victim woke up naked and confused on the bed because the accused injected her in the sofa in the living room.
When she asked the accused what had happened, he answered: “We had sex.”
When she asked where her clothes were the accused refused to give them to her.
The woman at that juncture picked a set of new clothes from her bag, wore them and staggered onto the compound of the hospital, only to fall down again while calling a friend at the hospital to come to her aid.
The friend turned up, was joined by a security man at the facility and they both assisted the victim back onto her feet, before she was admitted in hospital.
After the victim was treated and discharged, she went to the police station to report the matter, leading to the arrest of Afun, who the prosecution said admitted lacing the medication for the treatment of an infection she was suffering, with a sedative to reduce the pain from the injection.
The prosecution said although the accused denied having sex with the woman, a medical examination report on her proved otherwise.
According to the story, which was carried by The Mirror on December 17, 2022, the victim was a pharmacist’s assistant trainee on internship at the hospital, under the supervision of Afun at the time.
The accused was said to have earlier injected the victim with the first dose of Ceftriaxone for the infection without any complication.
As the victim was sleeping on the sofa, the accused woke her up to come over to the bedroom for the second dose which he had laced with sedative without her knowledge.
It was on his bed that Afun allegedly raped the woman, the court heard.
Lack of cooperation
Midway into the hearing of the case by a seven-member jury, however, the victim told the prosecution that she was no longer interested in the case, and also asked the prosecution to stop contacting her on phone.
“But this is an indictable offense, and we cannot take that from her”, a source close to the Office of the Attorney General in Ho said.
The source told The Mirror on Tuesday that the alleged victim prepared the witness statement and signed it voluntarily and caused it to be filed on her behalf.
Prior to that, the source said, the woman complained to the office that some people, including the accused person’s family members, were trying to influence her not to pursue the case and she would not take any of that from them.
“But when she was needed in court to testify to her witness statement she refused to come to court, and several attempts by the prosecution to reach her proved futile,” said the source.
The source said although the Attorney General’s Office represented her in the case, it also had a duty towards the accused whose liberty was at stake.
The source explained that although the Courts Act allowed for mediation in some cases, indictable cases such rape could not be settled outside the court of law.
Ex-parte
“Based on that, we made an ex-parte application to the court for her to be produced in court to testify in the case as the main witness, and the court granted it in June this year.
She was finally picked up in Accra on September 24 this year by personnel of the security agencies and brought to Ho the following day and has since been in custody.
The source said although the woman was advised to apply for bail, she had so far not been able to do so.
Hearing of the case continues on October 19.
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