By Mabinty M. Kamara
A 16-year-old boy has spent a month in police detention at the Approved School facility in Wellington without charge. Police say he was arrested on the 24 June after he had been reported to the Approved School Police Station for allegedly raping a girl who is also 16 years old.
Police at the station say they haven’t been able to grant him bail because no one has come forward to serve as his surety. Since his detention the father of the alleged rape victim has had to pay for his feeding and police officers have also contributed to feeding and clothing him.
The case is being investigated by the station’s Family Support Unit division whose Crimes Officer Sgt. James Kanu told Politico that “when the case was filed, somebody came who claimed to be his sister and was bringing him food initially but has since stopped visiting.”
Kanu says he is entitled to a release on bail “but because he doesn’t have any surety, he continues to be in detention because rape is a very serious crime so you cannot just release a suspect without any guarantee that he will be available when needed”.
He said they had done their job by investigating the case and had sent the necessary information to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP). But the file seems to be stuck.
“We have done our best in terms of speeding up investigations for this matter to be charged to court. When we sent for medical at the Rainbow Centre we waited for some time for the report which finally came last week and we immediately sent it to the DPPs Office for advice on the matter and we are still waiting to hear from them,” Kanu said.
Politico contacted the DPP, Easmond Ngakui, he said the file number 4162/2020 had not reached his office.
Father of the alleged rape victim, whom we will only refer to as Ishmael to protect the identity of his daughter, said the cost of getting justice for his daughter was becoming more expensive as the case continued to be drawn out.
“I want this case to be charged to court quickly because the more it stays long the more I spend on feeding the boy. The police officer in charge of the case asked me to be feeding the boy whiles in detention. From that time I have sent money four times now through Orange Money. Le30,000, 40,000, 20,000 and another 20,000,” Ishmael said.
Politico asked the Police Media boss, Superintendent Brima Kamara whether it was normal practice for officers to demand that complainants feed suspect in detention. He said that was not the norm.
Even though Sgt. Kanu denied that they received any money for food from the complainant, another officer confirmed that they did.
Kanu said they had had to spend their personal money to take care of the boy.
“Even this morning it’s the line manager that gave Le 5, 000 to buy food for him and on two occasions we have to buy clothes for him to change his dress. The other time it was me and on the other occasions the line manager. He even got sick here and we had to take care of him,” he said.
Explaining the circumstance of his daughter’s alleged rape, Ishmael said the 16-year-old boy dragged her into a room and forcefully had sex with her after her mother sent her for an errand around 5PM on the 21 June.
“According to my daughter, he [the suspect] dragged her into the room and the girl is a bit primitive since she has been staying in the village since birth. I only brought her this year to continue schooling. We looked everywhere for her and almost gave up. We wanted to go to the police station to report her disappearance when I heard that she was with my aunt and when we saw her there was blood all over her trousers so he pointed the door to the room where she had been dragged into”, Ishmael narrated.
The father said he was very furious and attempted to break the door but was stopped by a police officer neighbour. He later reported the incident.
The boy reportedly escaped but was later rearrested.
Ishmael said he had already received a report from Rainbow Centre, a specialist organisation that processes victims of rape and other sexual assaults.
Copyright (c) 2020 Politico Online
