An Ado Ekiti High Court has sentenced a labourer, Mr. Innocent Eze, to eight years imprisonment for defiling a 12-year-old girl.
Justice Adekanye Ogunmoye, who found Eze guilty in a two-count charge of indecent assault and defilement, sentenced him to one year imprisonment for indecent assault, and seven years for the other.
However, the eight years will run concurrently.
The judge said: "It is unfortunate that a 12-year-old girl would have been intercourseually defiled as was done to the victim in this case. It is more unfortunate that the matter came to the public domain.
"The convict, by his act, had succeeded in placing a stigma on the person of the victim, which may take a long time to erase. Then trauma suffered by the victim is definitely such as would take a longer time to forget.
"The act of the convict is not such as should be encouraged. This is definitely a barbaric act and the sentence must be such as would serve as deterrent to the convict and others who still harbour similar tendencies."
Eze, an indigene of Nsukka, Enugu State, had on August 31, 2011 at Ijan- Ekiti, raped the 12-year-old girl who assisted him to fetch water from a public well close to his residence.
The girl had earlier rejected his love advances.
He gave the injured minor N100 to "buy drugs" after the act and escaped from the scene not knowing that a neighbour attracted to the scene caught him in the act after peeping through the window.
The culprit's attempt at fooling the judge with claims that he was at work "brushing road for a timber lorry" by the time the incident occurred was punctured by witnesses who testified before the court.
In her reaction to the judgement, the Ekiti State governor's wife, Mrs. Bisi Fayemi, said it was a major victory for her crusade against intercourseual and child abuse and an indication that the state would not be a safe haven for intercourseual offenders.
National Mirror