A High Court sitting in Zuba, ordered. A 17-year-old teenage boy to clean the premises of SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Nyanya every day for six months, for indecent assault of a 5-year-old girl.
The presiding judge, Justice Kezziah Ogbonnaya, while giving the order on Monday, also advised the teenager to desist from committing crime and be of good behaviour.
The prosecution counsel, Donaldtus Abbah, told the court that the teenager, an apprentice at a barber’s shop in Area C, Nyanya in Abuja, committed the crime on December 17, 2024.
Abbah said the teenager defiled a 5-year-old girl on the said date, adding that the offence contravened the provisions of Sections 1(1), 2 of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, 2015.
The teenager pleaded guilty and begged the court for mercy.
He said: “The 5-year-old girl used to come to the barber shop, where I work as an apprentice, several times but I never touched her.
“I don’t know what came over me on that day. It was the first time I touched her and I regret it; please have mercy on me.”
The defence counsel, K. L. Ogbe, pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy, considering that the boy is just 17-year-old
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