A 20-year-old woman (name withheld) told a Ikeja Special Crimes Court how her father, Akin Isaac, supposedly got her pregnant and aborted the pregnancy.
The Nigerian News Agency (NAN) reports that the survivor said, while presenting evidence to her by State Attorney YA Alebiosu, that before living with her father, she was staying with her grandmother.
The survivor said her father raped her at age 17 during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown at his residence in Alapere, Lagos.
She said her father had asked her to come live with him in 2019 so she could go to high school and allow him to take care of her properly.
The witness said that his father, who had two wives, began touching his body suggestively.
“I was scared so I begged him to leave me, but he went to buy a cane, put it on the table and then hit me with it to have sex with me.
“He threatened to kill me if I told anyone. I was 17 years old at the time. I was on JSS 3 and I’m a type of person who used to sing but suddenly changed.
“I begged him one morning that I don’t want my life to be ruined, but he ignored my plea and went back to having sex with me. When she did it again, I didn’t come out,” she said.
The survivor further told the court that her father prevented her from attending his church.
“I used to go to the C&S church. He stopped me from going to church, but the pastor came to beg him to let me go to church.
“The second Sunday I went to church but he stopped me again and said I should go to the Redeemed church and I told him I didn’t want to go there.
“My father took my phone, he broke the SIM so that I could no longer communicate with my 27-year-old half-brother who I used to trust.
“He also used Gotv iron to hit me and some neighbors even said that I should move in with them while others are scared of him because he is an OPC man,” the survivor said.
She told the court that after she missed her period and found out she was pregnant, her father tried to abort the pregnancy by giving her drugs and injections, but to no avail.
“I received 15 injections to abort. He bought a medicine, the drug was not working. A nurse asked me who got me pregnant, but I couldn’t tell her it was my father.
“Then he took me to a place where there was no light and the pregnancy was terminated,” she said.
The witness further told the court that her father also tried to have sex with her again in her sleep in July 2020, after the abortion, but she objected, prompting neighbors to intervene.
“That night he came and started beating me and when the neighbors intervened he told them that I am his daughter and he can choose to do whatever he wants with me, even saying that if he wants he can kill me because I am his daughter,” she said.
Another witness for the prosecution, Modupe Aladelusi, a social worker at the Ministry of Youth and Social Development, who handles cases related to violence, abuse and neglect of children, told the court that she received a call on June 17, 2020 on the hotline of the agency.
She said she got a call from a man who said the girl said she was going to kill herself, that she had nowhere to go.
The social worker said that she went to a police station and a policewoman accompanied her to the girl’s house.
He added that later they took the survivor to the police station where they took a statement from her, and while at the police station her father arrived and arrested him.
“When we got to the office, she said that her father once got her pregnant and took her somewhere to have an abortion,” the social worker told the court.
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Judge Oluwatoyin Taiwo adjourned the case until April 13 to continue with the trial.
(YAYA)
