By Mohamed Foday Conteh
Justice Manuela Harding has sentenced 25-year-old welder, Abdul Rahman Sesay to life imprisonment for sexually penetrating a 6-year-old child in Freetown.
The State Prosecutor, Oladipo Robin-Mason Jr. led three witnesses in evidence.
The girl victim was the first prosecution witness followed by another minor and the police investigator.
The victim told the court that it was around 6pm while going about looking for another girl that Sesay called her into his apartment. She said he laid her on a mattress that was on the floor and sexually penetrated her. She said that the penetration caused her a lot of pain. The girl victim said it was in the process that another girl, aged 9 saw them.
The 9-year-old who was the second witness for the prosecution testified that she was sent to call the victim for them to have dinner and it was while she was searching for her that she found Sesay lying on top of her in his house. She said both Sesay and the 6 year old had their panties down. She said she told her aunt what she had witnessed and Sesay went on the run.
The third prosecution witness was the police investigator, Detective Sergeant 1123 Conteh C. who said that the matter was reported to them on the 11th December 2019. He submitted some exhibits in court which included an endorsed medical report of the victim and a Voluntary Caution Statement (VCS) made by the accused during the investigation by the police.
The four page medical report said that the victim was sexually penetrated as there was ‘evidence of a partial rupture of the hymen’.
The accused, Sesay, relied on his statement to the police in which he denied the allegations when put to him. Sesay said the 6 year old girl never entered his living room and that on the date of the alleged incident he was lying on his foam watching a movie alone.
Justice Harding said that an under-five medical card of the victim proved that she was a minor on the day of the incident. She also found out that both the first and second witnesses gave the same description of the place of the incident and that the time of the incident was clearly stated in the evidence of both the first and second witnesses.
The defence lawyer, Randy S. Bangura, in his plea of mitigation, asked the judge to ‘temper justice with mercy’. He said that the accused, being a welder before the incident, used to fend for his wife and ageing parents.
The lawyer added that the accused after spending two years on remand at the Pademba Road Correctional Centre has learnt his lesson and was remorseful.
Justice Harding said that she considers the offence to be of aggravated circumstance and that the act of Sesay will psychologically affect the victim anytime she happens to come across a place similar to where she was sexually abused.
She said if such offence is not punished it will serve as a recipe for recurrence and described the offender as a threat to the African culture of people caring for a child of their neighbor.
Justice Harding concluded that the ‘only reformation for the young man is for him to spend the rest of his life behind bars’.
Sesay was at the Sexual Offences Model Court in Freetown on Thursday to answer to a one count indictment of sexual penetration of a child in December 2019.
Copyright © Politico Online (05/11/21)
