UK Court Jails Nigerian Man 20 Years for Rape, Highlights Police Negligence

UK Court Jails Nigerian Man 20 Years for Rape, Highlights Police Negligence
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A Nigerian man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Court of Appeal of the United Kingdom (UK) for raping a child who was also his daughter.

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The convict, alluded to as RK in the court’s judgment seen, was condemned in November 2022 to “a custodial term of 15 years detainment and a drawn out permit time of five years.”

On November 26, 2021, RK was found guilty of one count of raping a child under the age of 13 in Croydon Crown Court. Judge Gower KC was in charge of the case. At the time of the offense in the United Kingdom, the child, his daughter, was 10 years old.

The victim, who was two years old when her mother left her, told authorities in the UK that her father had raped her in Nigeria and the UK on a regular basis at least since 2011 when she was 10 years old.

The case also demonstrates that victims of domestic and sexual abuse rarely receive protection or justice in Nigeria. It presents a botched an open door for the Nigerian police to demonstrate its obligation to safeguard such casualties.

The victim, Susan, “also referred to being raped by her father on ‘one or two’ occasions after he had taken her back to live in Nigeria… the police in Nigeria was informed, but did nothing in response to the report,” the UK court heard in evidence.

How Mr. RK met his Waterloo Mr. RK is a Nigerian with a passport from the UK who frequently travels between Nigeria and the UK. He had his girl, who the court alluded to as Susan, in 2001 with his accomplice, who deserted him and Susan at two years of age.

She was raised by her fatherly grandparents in Nigeria until 2006 when her dad set up for her to head out to the UK to live with him. He married a woman she didn’t like shortly after she arrived. After that, the couple had a child together.

Her father attacked Susan just before her seventh birthday. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison for physically harming her.

After the incident, social services took care of little Susan until May 2011, when she was given back to her father, Mr. RK.

In September, Mr. RK’s marriage in the UK broke down, and his wife left the house with their child. He left Susan alone with her.

Mr. RK changed the family name for reasons that aren’t mentioned in the court document cited by this newspaper. He and Susan returned to Nigeria in January 2012; He started a relationship with a woman the court referred to as Mary while he was in Nigeria.

Susan warmed up to Mary, in contrast to the British wife of her father. Mary was regarded as a mother figure by Susan, who had a great love for her. Little Susan didn’t have the advantage of investing a lot of energy with Mary. She was sent away to an all-inclusive school and just returned for school occasions.

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Mr. RK left Mary in October 2017, five years later, to go back to the UK and rekindle his relationship with his ex-wife. The choice sent Susan back to an alienated spouse, living with her grandparents; her dad attempted to inspire her to pass on her grandparents and return to him, yet she stood up.

“He made arrangements for her kidnapping when she refused, presumably to send her to a military school. She was only able to escape because of an uncle’s efforts, the court stated.

Susan, then 16 years old, applied to the British Council in Nigeria for emergency travel documentation in January 2018. She went to the UK by herself with the intention of staying with another family member.

At the point when she showed up in the UK, the UK line force authorities inquired as to why she was an unaccompanied minor and heard her account of how her dad had physically attacked her.

i In response to border officials in March 2018, she claimed that her father raped her while they lived independently in a Croydon apartment from September to December 2011 (before he whisked her away to Nigeria).

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As per the court report, the case must be indicted once Susan concluded she needed to. She, at last, chose to in July 2018. By August of that very year, she gave a meeting portraying her involvement in Mr. RK, her dad.

She told UK police that he began to behave differently toward her after his father’s wife and the other child left the Croydon property. She claimed that “he sexually abused me” and “he would touch me.”

She said that the rape only happened once, on a bed in the apartment’s living room. She also mentioned that her father raped her “one or two” times after he brought her back to Nigeria to live. She claimed that he also raped her there.

In Nigeria, she told Mary (her dad’s accomplice, who she got used to), who took her to her grandma, and the police in Nigeria were educated yet did nothing in light of the report.

Susan additionally portrayed exhaustively an event when she was around 12 or 13 years of age when her dad assaulted her in the family home. She said that it worked out “a couple of times” and at another point “two times” yet gave no particular insights regarding different events,” the court papers said about her declaration of being assaulted by her dad in Nigeria.

She did, however, recall a specific instance in which she and RK were in the same hotel bed when he touched her breasts. She also claimed that there were times when he rubbed the top of her vagina with his fingers.

On entering the UK from Nigeria on 12 September 2018, RK was captured.

Protection

He denied the assault in Croydon, asserting that the charge was malevolent and provoked by Susan’s craving for vengeance on him for his choice to separate the family home and pass on his accomplice Mary in Nigeria to recharge his relationship with his significant other, whom Susan hated.

He also suggested that Susan was encouraged to make the false claim by his mother, with whom he had recently broken up.

He claimed that he was aware of the rape allegation because it had been made in Nigeria and that he had learned about it a few months earlier when he went to the police station for reasons that had nothing to do with it. His attorney would later uncover that he had gone to submit a few questions to the police about his mom.

In the prosecution’s case, the Nigerian tape was initially not included in the indictment. Despite the defense’s protestations, it was nonetheless included as time went on, and the court deemed it admissible.

The trial judge explained why he accepted the Nigerian case as evidence and called the decision not to charge Mr. RK with crimes related to the allegations against him in Nigeria “seriously flawed.”

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He stated, “The evidence was admissible on the basis that it was capable of establishing that the defendant (Mr. RK) had the propensity for which the prosecution contended, namely to force himself sexually upon his daughter, which in turn was relevant to the central question in the case, which was whether he raped his daughter in this country (UK).” This was relevant to the central question in the case, which was whether he raped his daughter in this country (UK).

The judge came to the conclusion that Mr. RK would not be fundamentally unfairly disadvantaged by the admission of the evidence, so it would be inappropriate to exclude it.

The judge thought that if the jury didn’t hear this evidence and got an incomplete or partial picture of what little Susan said happened, it would be fundamentally unfair to her.

Mr. RK was indicted and condemned for assaulting his girl. The appeal court rejected the appeal of his conviction and sentence.

A three-part board of the Court of Allure maintained the discoveries of the preliminary adjudicator in Croydon that “There is no proof of bias to the safeguard that would affect the reasonableness of the preliminary.”

“The conviction is safe, and the appeal against conviction is dismissed,” the appeal stated, citing numerous additional reasons.

Additionally, the defense sought to have Mr. RK’s sentence reconsidered.

The Court of Appeal, however, rejected the call and stated: The offender was correctly classified by the judge; After weighing the various aggravating and mitigating factors that he identified, the real question was whether or not he was justified in raising the starting point from 13 years to a custodial term of 15 years.

The court acknowledged that the convict’s decision to relocate the child to Nigeria shortly after the offense to reduce the likelihood that she would tell anyone was aggravating.

It said, “… while 15 years was maybe towards the upper finish of the accessible condemning reach for this single offense, and different appointed authorities could have forced a custodial period that was closer to the beginning stage, we are not convinced that the term that this accomplished adjudicator picked was off-base on a fundamental level nor that it was obviously extreme.”

Additionally, “the appeal against the sentence is also dismissed” for these reasons.

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