Justice Abiola Soladoye of a Lagos Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court, Ikeja, yesterday, sentenced a 45-year-old businessman, Emeka Orisakwe, to triple life imprisonment for defiling his three under-aged girls.
  
In sentencing Orisakwe, the judge held that the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt the three-count charge brought against him. The state government had arraigned the convict for offence bordering on sexual assault by carnal penetration of three of his underage children.
  
The state counsel had told the court that Orisakwe committed the offences between January and July 2021 at No.32 Ganiyat Street, Monkey Village, Maza Maza, Lagos.
  
His offence contravenes Section 261of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State 2015. While delivering the judgment, Justice Soladoye said the defendant was a “wicked and pathological liar”, whose device to deny the offences through his wife’s mental instability, was most bizarre and unfortunate.
  
She also berated the immediate younger sister of the defendant, who testified at the first defendant’s witness, (DW1), for tendering a medical report concerning the mental state of the defendant’s wife, which did not correlate with the timing of the incident.
  
Justice Soladoye noted that DW1’s evidence was unreliable and a pack of lies  tainted by deception after she had corrupted the minds of the  survivors to lie before the court.
  
“Children are very honest, but I observed the three children that came to testify and this court could see that their aunt, whom they stayed with after the incident, had been working on their brains to tell lies before this court.
 
“The children’s subsequent denials in court after they made statements at Satellite Police Station that their father messed around their private parts with his fingers is an afterthought and very unfortunate.
  
“The children were taken away from the custody of their mother and the sister-in-law painted lies in their minds. This court cannot be fooled. The first defendant’s witness (DW1) is a liar and a wicked sister-in-law, whose evidence is self-serving to save her brother from drowning,” the court held.
  
Justice Soladoye stated that DW1 and the defendant attempted to get through the back door when they could not get through the front door as the medical reports on the survivors revealed blunt forceful penetration.
  
“The medical reports which were carried out on the three children and admitted into evidence before this court showed bruises on the inner surface, blunt and forceful penetration of the survivor’s vaginas.
  
“The medical examination revealed that the three children suffered various degrees of bruises from the sexual assault perpetrated by their biological father.
   
“This corroborates the statement of the survivors at the police station and the evidence given by the second prosecution witness (PW2), an officer from a child advocacy agency, that the brother of the survivors, told him that he once saw his father, fingering his sister,” the judge held.
  
The judge further held that the subsequent denial of the defendant was an afterthought, which did not hold waters. She, therefore, convicted the defendant of the three counts and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each of the counts.
 
The judge ordered that the sentencing should run concurrently, while the convict’s name should be in the sexual offences register as maintained by Lagos State government.
  
During trial, Deputy Director of Department of Public Prosecution (DDPP), Olusola Soneye, had called seven witnesses and tender several documents, which were admitted as exhibits, while Orisakwe and his sister testified for behalf of the defence.
  
The prosecution witness had told court that the mother of the children found bloodstains on the private part of one of them, and she told her mother that her father had touched her “bombom”.
  
The witness said: “Upon further questioning, the mother called the other two children and they also confessed to her that their father had been assaulting them sexually whenever she was not at home.”