A 28-year-old carpenter, who was sentenced by an Accra Circuit Court for indecent assault, said it was the devil that tempted him to finger the girl, aged eight.
“I did not even know what my fingers were doing under the private part of the girl,” Tettey Sewu confessed to the police when he was arrested.
The Court presided over by Mrs Rita Abrokwa Doko in passing sentence said, by your own words you have been convicted. What do you have to say?
It was then that Tettey refuted the charge, saying he had never committed the offence but the Court had listened to the victim against him.
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So the judge asked him whether it was the victim who wrote his caution statement and asked him why he did not say all those in the witness box.
He told the Court that he was dizzy because the victim’s father had slapped him upon his arrest and he did not know what he told the police.
Later, he pleaded for leniency and was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment because the Court said the offence was a misdemeanor.
In addition, he is to pay a compensation of GHC500.00 to the victim to mitigate her medical expenses.
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Sergeant Opoku Aniagyei, who held brief for Deputy Superintendent of Police Agnes Boafo, said the complainant is a mason and a resident of Abokobi in Accra, where Tettey also resided.
He said the girl, eight years, is a Kindergarten Two (KG Two) pupil. In April 2018, the complainant, who has separated from his wife and has custody of their children (male and female) left for a funeral at Abokobi-Boi.
At about 1800 hours on the same day, in the quest to look for their father, the children went to Tettey to find out and while there, he intentionally asked the girl’s brother to run an errand for him.
The Prosecution said Tettey then took off the victim’s pants and inserted his fingers into her vagina.
In the course, he also removed his pants and laid on the little girl only to get up quickly on seeing her brother approaching them.
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Sergeant Aniagyei said about three weeks later, the children mother visited them and when she was bathing the girl, she saw sores in her female organ.
She questioned the victim who narrated her ordeal to the mother and later to her father.
He said on June 28, same year, a formal complaint was lodged with the Adenta Domestic Violence and Victim’s Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service, where a medical form was issued for the victim to be examined and treated at the hospital.
The accused was arraigned after the report was submitted.
Source: GNA