By Francis H. Murray
Justice Monfred Sesay of the High Court in Freetown has sentenced Osman Kamara, a fisherman to 15 years imprisonment after convicting him on a one-count charge of sexual penetration of an eight-year-old girl. The judge said the prison term included the 20 months Kamara had already spent on remand during his trial.
The prosecution had alleged that the 23-year-old fisherman sexually penetrated the girl on the 19 April 2018 in Freetown.
In her testimony, the mother of the victim, Adama Kargbo said the accused lived with them in the same house but in different apartments in the Creole Town section of Tombo on the Freetown Peninsular.
She said she trusted Kamara to the extent that he would call the victim at any time to send her on short errands such as buying basic food stuff for him to which she never objected. She said it was during one of such situations that he sexually penetrated her daughter. The witness said her daughter didn’t tell her of the incident until the night of the same day when she realized that blood was oozing from her private parts.
The victim told the court that Kamara had sent her to buy him Gari and that upon her return she found him in his room where she handed over the Gari to him. She said he then asked her to lie on the bed after which the accused “undressed me, lay on top of me, opened my legs, inserted his penis into my vagina and had sex with me”.
Joseph A. K Sesay was the state prosecutor.
Copyright © 22/05/20 Politico Online
