Selorm Asase, the Sogakope driver accused of defiling two primary school girls and infecting one with gonorrhoea, pleaded alibi and also denied knowing the girls, when he opened his defence at the Sogakope Circuit Court on Thursday.
“The accused, also known as Kwaku Manu, however, gave conflicting accounts of his whereabout, at the time the alleged sex acts took place.
In one instance, he told the court that he was at a fitting mechanic’s workshop at Sasikope to repair his vehicle, and in another moment said he was working at a construction site somewhere in Sogakope with a man whose name he gave only as Joe.
The prosecution then informed the court that Asase’s claim that he was at a fitting mechanic’s workshop was investigated by the police, and found to be false.
Asked by the prosecution if he could lead investigators to the said Joe to verify his alibi that they worked together at a construction site, the accused said he had lost contact with him.
Continuing his defence, Asase said: “My Lord, I never knew these girls, I only got to know them through this case”.
Furthermore, the accused said, although the girls were defiled in the house in which he lived, the alleged act did not take place in his room, so he could not have been the man who visited the sex act on them.
The court, presided over by Mr Emmanuel Ayesu Essampong has heard that, after carrying out the act on the girls, Asase, 21, gave each of them 40 pesewas and warned them never to disclose what he did to them to anyone, or else he would kill them.
When he made his first appearance before the court on March 26, this year, Asase pleaded not guilty to defilement of a child under 16.
He has since been remanded in prison custody.
Detective Inspector Jacob Awiagah, who presented the facts, had told the court that the Class 2 pupils were friends and classmates in a Sogakope primary school, and that the accused lived in the same vicinity with the younger one.
The prosecution said that on March 13, this year at about 2pm, after the school had closed, and the girls were going home, the accused intercepted and sent them to buy him “pure water”.
They obliged and when they returned with the water, he lured them into a friend’s room and forcibly had sex with them “one after the other”, the court was told.
Asase, the prosecution said, then gave the coins to the girls before warning them to keep the ordeal they had been through, a secret.
A week later, however, the prosecution said the father of the older girl realised that she could not walk properly and when he questioned her, she mentioned Asase as the one who forcibly had sex with her and her classmate.
A report was subsequently made to the police, after which Asase, who initially gave his name as Kwaku Manu, was arrested.
Subsequently, the victims were issued with medical forms to go to the hospital for examination and treatment.
The prosecution told the court that the medical report, signed by a medical officer, confirmed that the girls had been defiled and that the younger one had been infected with the sexually transmitted disease.
The court adjourned hearing to May 15 to when Asase will call his witnesses.
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