The spiritual head of the New Jerusalem Religion, Pastor Prince Mark aka Marvin Brown has been slapped with a 25-year jail-term with hard labour for defiling and infecting a 14-year-old boy with the deadly HIV disease.
A Tema Circuit Court sentenced Pastor Mark on two counts of having carnal knowledge of the 14-year old boy, for which he was slapped with 25 years. And on the charge of infecting the boy with HIV/AIDS, the court gave him two years, but the sentences would run concurrently and therefore he would spend the next 25 years at the Nsawam Medium Prisons.
He had earlier confessed to infecting the boy with the deadly disease.
The Tema Circuit Court A was full of sympathizers, church members and relations of the self-styled pastor, as they stormed the place to show their solidarity with him.
The court, presided over by Mrs. Lydia Osei Marfo, further asked the self-styled man of God to pay the sum of GH�15,000 to the family of the 14-year-old boy as a reparation package to cater for the victim�s medical care.
The followers and sympathizers of the so-called man of God were taken by the storm when the court slapped him with the jail term.
According to the prosecutor, Chief Inspector Adolf Otchere, when the case was called in camera yesterday, Prince Mark wanted to change his plea, but the court rejected it, stating that �he was, during the last hearing, convicted on his own plea of guilty to the charges, therefore he could not change his plea but could appeal against the judgement through his lawyers.
�He told the court he wanted to change his plea from guilty to not guilty under the pretext that since he pleaded guilty during the last hearing, he had been experiencing sleepless nights which is affecting him,� the prosecutor told Daily Guide shortly after the sentencing.
The pastor was arrested for sodomising the primary four pupil on five separate occasions in his Tema Community 4 house, after which he warned the victim not to disclose his ordeal to anyone or he would die.
He admitted sodomizing the victim during police interrogations, but refuted the claim that he did it on five separate occasions, claiming instead, that it occurred only once under the influence of alcohol which had energized his libido.
He was quickly arraigned before the court where he initially pleaded not guilty. He changed his plea to guilty at the last hearing after a court ordered HIV test showed that he was indeed positive.
The father of the victim joined the church of the self-styled man of God and they became friends, with the victim also becoming a staunch member of the New Jerusalem Religion in Tema.
In the month of November last year, Prince Mark was said to have requested the father of the boy to allow his son to spend the school vacation with him at his house and after some consultation, the victim�s father agreed.
Prince Mark reportedly lured the 14-year-old boy to his bedroom where he defiled him through the anus under the pretext of buying him laptop and computer games.
The victim often feels sick upon returning home to his parents after his vacation stay with the pastor.
The parents were said to have sent him to the hospital and after a series of medical tests, it was confirmed that he had acquired HIV while the parents tested negative.
<<Print>>