Two sisters on Monday narrated before an Ikeja Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court how their middle-aged father allegedly defiled them at knife point in their home.
NAN reports that the teenagers testified at the start of their father’s trial on a two-count charge of defilement.
Led in evidence by prosecution counsel, Mrs Arinola Momoh-Ayokanbi, they told the court that their father had seven children–five girls and two boys.
They testified that the defendant started abusing his four oldest daughters sexually after their mother died during childbirth in 2008.
One of them, who testified as the first prosecution witness said the incest started when they lived at a barracks in Lagos.
“My father started by using his fingers on us at nighttime when we were sleeping. When we moved out of the barracks to the house my father built at Iyana-Era in Lagos, he continued [the act] in a bedroom we shared.
“Later, my father progressed to leaving his bedroom and lying between us, groping us. When we wake up, he will ask why we are awake; he threatened to beat us and send us away.
“One night, he came to our room and asked us to separate ourselves. I went to the sitting room while my sister was in the room. He approached me and said if I did not allow him to have sex with me, he would use a knife and hammer with him to injure me.
“He started slapping me, and I allowed him to have sex with me; after it happened, I cried bitterly,” she said.
The second witness, now 18 years’ old, while testifying as the third prosecution witness, told the court that she and her sister went to their village after their mother’s demise.
She said that, on return to Lagos, she noticed that one of her older sisters had run away from home.
“I asked what happened, and we were told she had run away from home because our father was having sex with her.
“My lord, not up to a year after our return from the village, our father started [using his finger] on us. He would have sex with me in the bedroom and threaten me with a knife,” she said.
“The police summoned our father and interrogated him, and he lied that he did not do anything. A policewoman told him to allow us to lock our bedroom door at night.
“We came back home from the police station at night; our father knocked on our door and said if we would not open the door, he will use the hammer or knife to injure us.
“We refused to open the door and did not sleep that night till the next day,” she testified.
Corroboration this, her sister said, “At the police station, we said we did not want him arrested but we did not want to be in the house with him, we wanted to stay far away from him. I called the DPO and he said there was nothing he could do because it was a family matter.”
