A 35-year-old music teacher and counsellor of Lachez O International School, Anthony Okeh, has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for defiling a nine-year-old JSS 1 student (name withheld).
The sentence was handed down on him by Justice Abiola Soladoye of the Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, on Wednesday.
The judge in her judgment held that the prosecution was able to discharge the burden of proof of the charge of defilement against Okeh.
She said that Okeh was a “pathological liar”, “everything a teacher should not be” by having unlawful sexual intercourse with his pupil and “a soulless man without any iota of shame.”
Justice Soladoye said the case was direct evidence as the survivor was in court to narrate her sexual ordeals in the hands of her music teacher, a sexual predator.
According to her, the evidence of the survivor was lucid, cogent, unequivocal and compelling and the denial of the convict did not hold water.
The judge said: “To the mind of this court, the denial of the defendant is a form to distance himself from the crime. The convict is a pathological liar whose evidence is an afterthought and I do not believe him at all.
“I do not believe the other three defence witnesses as well because their evidence is devoid of truth and they are tainted witnesses.
“Cases are not won on the number of witnesses presented to testify before the court but on the quality of evidence adduced that is credible, convincing and compelling.”
The court also held that the survivor in her testimony had narrated how the convict called her upstairs into the music room, where he showed her different nude pictures, claimed to be a cultist and threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone.
Soladoye said, “The survivor recognised the man in the box as her music teacher who defiled her more than two times in the music room.
“The testimony of the investigative police officer was corroborated by the testimony of the survivor when she said that the mother of the girl noticed her reluctant to go to school and she later confessed to her mother what the convict had been doing to her.
“The IPO said that the mother of the survivor (nominal complainant) reported the case to the police.
“Statement of the nominal complainant was admitted into evidence.”
The court thereafter convicted Okeh of the one-count charge of defilement and consequently sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Soladoye also ordered that the convict’s name be registered in the Lagos State Sexual Offences Register.
The judge also advised school owners to recruit teachers with high moral standards to teach in their schools to avoid a dent in their institutions.
“Furthermore, all stakeholders in the administration of criminal justice must form a strong collaboration in combating sexual violence offences to protect the dignity, mental health, physical and psychological trauma of survivors in such cases,” Soladoye said.
During the trial, the State Counsel, Miss Abimbola Abolade, presented two witnesses; the survivor and an Investigative Police Officer while the defence called four witnesses.
Abolade told the court that the convict committed the offence on September 6, 2022, at the Lachez O International School, Agege in Lagos.
The prosecution submitted that the convict had unlawful sexual intercourse with the minor by penetrating her vagina with his penis.
According to the prosecution, the offence contravenes Section 137 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, 2015.
