Court Jails Woman 21 Years In Prison In Awka For Child Abduction, Exploitation, Others

The Children, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Chief Magistrate Court, sitting in Awka, has sentenced a thirty-five-year-old woman to prison in Awka for offences of child labor, child exploitation and abduction of children.

The convict, named Success James, was prosecuted before the Court on an 8-count charge and found guilty of seven charges by the presiding Court.

Delivering judgement on the case, the Presiding Chief Magistrate, Genevieve Osakwe found Success James guilty of count one and sentenced her to five years imprisonment, count two attracted five years imprisonment, two years imprisonment in count three, count four was four years imprisonment, two years imprisonment in count five, in count seven, she was sentenced to two years imprisonment, while count eight attracted one year imprisonment.

The Chief Magistrate, however, declared that all the sentences would run concurrently, without any option of fine.

The convict, Success James was earlier apprehended at Onitsha and arraigned before the Chief Magistrate Court in Awka, sometime in December, 2022, for abducting four teenage girls and subjecting them to child labour and sexual exploitation.

Recall that in the month of December 2022, four teenage girls were rescued by the Honorable Commissioner for Women and Social Welfare, Mr Ify Obinabo, about two days to Christmas.

The girls who are between thirteen and fifteen years old respectively, all hail from Akwa Ibom State.

In their separate evidences before the Court, the victims told the Court that they were lured into prostitution business by one aunty Success who told them that she had a job opportunity for them in Agbor, Delta state, where they would be selling drinks in a beer parlor, but on getting to Agbor, they discovered that they were brought to become prostitutes.

Reacting to the judgement, the Women and Social Welfare Commissioner Mrs Obinabo commended the speedy trial of the case and revealed that the children had been enrolled in school, while those who preferred skills acquisition had started acquiring skills of their choice at the state-owned Skills Acquisition Center, in Awka.

Mrs Obinabo went further to warn that Anambra state Government would not tolerate any crimes of such nature and would continue to do her best to ensure that children and women in the state get justice, whenever their rights are violated.