Married man bags 6-year jail sentence for r@ping 14-year-old

A 29-year-old married man, Denen Agena has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by a Benue State High Court sitting in Makurdi, for r@ping a 14-year-old girl.

Agena who reportedly raped the victim and abandoned her in an uncompleted building in 2020, was handed the sentence by Justice Ijoho on Monday, October 30. 

Defending himself in court, Agena claimed that the victim was his girlfriend and that she consented to having canal knowledge of her in his house during which she started bleeding and he used his shirt to clean the bloodstains.

However, Justice Ijoho held that in a country like Nigeria, a mature 29-year-old man cannot have a 14-year-old child as his girlfriend. The Judge described Agena as “a paedophile” and also held that where a suspect confessed to have committed a crime, medical test became unnecessary in the case of rape.

Asides from being handed a 6-year jail sentence, Agena was also asked to pay a fine of N100,000, failure of which will lead to him serving an additional 12 months in prison. 

The judge maintained that the penalty was to serve as a deterrence to others intending to commit a similar crime.