The UK court, before jailing the man 20 years, heard of how the Nigerian police failed to do anything when aspects of the rape case were referred to them.
The United Kingdom (UK) Court of Appeal has affirmed the jailing of a Nigerian man for 20 years for raping a minor who is also his daughter.
The convict, referred to as RK in the court’s judgement seen by PREMIUM TIMES, was sentenced in November 2022 to “a custodial term of 15 years imprisonment and an extended licence period of five years.”
RK was initially convicted of one count of rape of a child under 13, 0n 26 November 2021 in Crown Court at Croydon. The case was before Judge Gower KC. The child, his daughter, was 10 years old at the time of the offence in the UK.
The victim, who was age two when her mother abandoned her, told UK authorities how she came under serial rape by her father at least from 2011 when she was age 10 both in Nigeria and the UK.
The case also highlights how victims of sexual and domestic abuse hardly get justice and protection in Nigeria. It presents a missed opportunity for the Nigerian police to prove its commitment to protecting such victims.
The UK court heard in evidence and acknowledged that the victim, identified as 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 were informed, but did nothing in response to the report.”
How Mr RK met his Waterloo
Mr RK is a Nigerian with a UK passport, frequently shuttling the UK and Nigeria. He had his daughter, who the court referred to as Susan, in 2001 with his partner, who abandoned him and Susan at two years old.
She was brought up by her paternal grandparents in Nigeria until 2006 when her father arranged for her to travel to the UK to live with him. Shortly after her arrival, he married a woman she did not get on with. The couple went on to have a child together.
On the eve of Susan’s seventh birthday, her father assaulted her. He inflicted bodily harm on her, which earned him a 12-month imprisonment.
Social services took custody of little Susan after the incident until May 2011, when she was returned to her father (Mr RK).
Mr RK’s marriage in the UK broke down in September, which led his wife to leave the house with their child. Susan was left alone with him.
For reasons not stated in the court document cited by this newspaper, Mr RK changed the family name. By January 2012, he moved back to Nigeria with Susan. While in Nigeria, he met a lady the court called Mary and started a relationship with her.
Unlike her father’s wife in the UK, Susan warmed up to Mary. “Susan liked Mary very much and regarded her as a mother figure.” Little Susan did not have the luxury of spending much time with Mary. She was sent away to boarding school and only returned for school holidays.
Five years later (October 2017), Mr RK left Mary to return to the UK and rekindle his relationship with his estranged wife. The decision sent Susan back to an estranged wife, living with her grandparents; her father tried to get her to leave her grandparents and return to him, but she resisted.
“When she refused, he arranged for her kidnap, apparently to send her to a military school. It was only thanks to the efforts made by an uncle that she could escape,” the court said.
In January 2018, 16-year-old Susan obtained emergency travel documentation through the British Council in Nigeria. She travelled to the UK alone, intending to stay with another family member.
When she arrived in the UK, the UK border force officials asked why she was an unaccompanied minor and heard her story of how her father had sexually assaulted her.
In response to the border officials in March 2018, she alleged that her father retained her passport and raped her between September and December 2011 when they lived independently in the flat in Croydon (before he whisked her away to Nigeria).
According to the court document, the case could only be prosecuted once Susan decided she wanted to. She eventually decided to in July 2018. By August of the same year, she gave an interview narrating her experience with Mr RK, her father.
She told UK police that after his father’s wife and the other child left the property in Croydon, he began to act differently towards her. She said that “he would touch me” and that “he sexually abused me”.
She described the rape as occurring on one occasion only, on a bed in the sitting room of the flat. She also referred to being raped by her father on “one or two” occasions after he had taken her back to live in Nigeria. She said that he also sexually assaulted her there.
In Nigeria, she told Mary (her father’s partner, who she warmed up to), who took her to her grandmother, and the police in Nigeria were informed but did nothing in response to the report.
Susan also described in detail an occasion when she was around 12 or 13 years old when her father raped her in the family home. She said that it happened “a few times” and at another point “twice” but gave no specific details about the other occasions,” the court papers said about her testimony of being raped by her father in Nigeria.
However, she described a specific occasion when RK was in the same bed as her in a hotel when he touched her breasts. She also said there were occasions when he put his fingers inside her vagina and rubbed the top part of it.
On entering the UK from Nigeria on 12 September 2018, RK was arrested.
Defence
He denied the rape in Croydon, claiming that the allegation was malicious and prompted by Susan’s desire for revenge on him for his decision to break up the family home and leave his partner Mary in Nigeria to renew his relationship with his wife, whom Susan disliked.
He also suggested that his mother, with whom he had recently fallen out, was instrumental in encouraging Susan to make the false claim.
He said he was aware of the allegation of rape because it had been made in Nigeria and had found out about it some months earlier when he visited the police station for unrelated reasons. His lawyer would later reveal that he had gone to make some complaints to the police about his mother.
Prosecution’s case
Prosecution lawyers initially did not include the tape in Nigeria in the indictment. Still, as time went on, it was brought on board, which the court declared admissible despite protestations by the defence.
The trial judge gave his reason for admitting the case from Nigeria as evidence and described the decision not to charge Mr RK with offences reflecting the allegations of what he did in Nigeria as “seriously flawed”.
He said that “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).”
The judge concluded that the admission of the evidence imposed no fundamental unfairness on Mr RK and that it would be inappropriate to exclude it.
The judge viewed it that there was a risk of fundamental unfairness to little Susan if the jury were not to hear this evidence and as a result be presented with an incomplete or partial picture of what she said happened.
Mr RK was convicted and sentenced for raping his daughter. He appealed his conviction and sentence, which the appeal court dismissed.
A three-member panel of the Court of Appeal upheld the findings of the trial judge in Croydon that “There is no evidence of prejudice to the defence that would have a materially adverse effect on the fairness of the trial.”
The appeal gave many other reasons and declared, “The conviction is safe, and the appeal against conviction is dismissed.”
The defence also sought to have Mr RK’s sentence reviewed.
But rejecting the call, the Court of Appeal noted: “…the Judge did not err in categorising the offending; the real issue was whether he was justified in elevating the starting point of 13 years to a custodial term of 15 years after balancing the various aggravating and mitigating factors that he identified.”
The court acknowledged the convict’s decision to remove the child from the jurisdiction to Nigeria within a short time after the offence occurred to minimise the chances of her telling anyone was an aggravating factor.
It said, “… whilst 15 years was perhaps towards the upper end of the available sentencing range for this single offence, and other judges might have imposed a custodial period that was nearer to the starting point, we are not persuaded that the term that this experienced judge chose was wrong in principle nor that it was manifestly excessive.”
And for these reasons, “the appeal against the sentence is also dismissed.”