A Magistrate Court sitting in Port Harcourt has sentenced a 34 year-old Mishack Aguebere, a Pastor with the Cherubim and Seraphim Church, Rumuomasi Port Harcourt, to two years imprisonment for unlawful and indecent deals of putting hot candle wax into the private part of a thirteen-year-old girl under his care.
Court documents showed that the incident occurred on 18 July, 2018.
The accused who was charged for unlawful and indecent deals under section 222 of the criminal code CAP 37 Vol 2 Law of Rivers State of Nigeria 1999, was said to have also sexually assaulted his wife’s 13 year old niece living with them inside the Church premises at Rumuomasi.
Chief Magistrate Felicitas Amanze, delivering her judgement found the accused guilty for pouring hot candle wax into the victims private part, fingered her severally, inserted a key holder into the victims private part which he used in scooping the candle wax out and licked it.
Chief Magistrate Amanze held that the actions of the accused resulted in the victim having forceful tear of her hymen and other medical conditions as shown by the medical report conducted and tendered in court.
The Court ruled that it was unlawful for the accused to have sexually assaulted the victim whose mother abandoned, and had been under his custody since she was six years old, and threatened to harm her should she tell anyone.
Chief Magistrate Amanze further ruled that the victim who has been psychological traumatized all through the court trial deserved justice, noting that sexual assault on children is becoming so rampant in the society, and thereby sentenced the accused Mishack Aguebere to two years imprisonment.
In an interview with our correspondent, Head Legal Officer FIDA Rivers State, Esther Achor-Korienta, thanked the principal of Community Secondary School Rumuomasi who took up the case when the victim reported the incident to her, while frowning at the sentence as the punishment ought to have attracted life imprisonment.
She urged the Police to always charge cases in accordance with the appropriate section of the law.
She admonished mothers not to ever abandon their children no matter the circumstances surrounding their birth.
On her part, the Principal of Community Secondary School, CSS Rumuomasi, Dike Eberechi, advised principals and teachers of other schools to always take up complaints of students and pupils presented to them, while thanking FIDA Rivers for not relenting in the prosecution of the case.
The victim was taken away from her grandmother’s custody in Imo State by her aunt, her mother’s elder sister who is married to Pastor Mishack Aguebere, when she was six years old and was brought to Port Harcourt to live with them.
The victim was said to have been abandoned by her mother who left her for bringing bad luck to her after she had her out of wedlock and married a man in Cameroon, leaving her under the care of her grandmother.
The victim, however, complained that the accused had been making sexual advances at her, fingered her severally which she was afraid to tell her aunt for fear of what she might do to her.
The accused had on 18 July, 2018, knocked on the victim’s door at the church premises where they reside, pushed her to the bed, tied her hands and poured hot candle wax into her private part, scooped the wax with a keyholder and licked it.
The victim went to school the next day 19 July, 2018 in pains without having her bath, and following the sexual harassment education they have been thought in school, reported the incident to her principal who took her for medical examination, reported the case to Rumuomasi Police Station and FIDA Rivers which led to the arrest of the accused.
