Monrovia – After three weeks of what seemed to be a delay of justice to the family of a gang sodomy victim, the Liberia National Police has confirmed to FrontPage Africa that it will Wednesday arraign the prime suspect before Criminal Court “E”.
Report by Al-Varney Rogers alvarney.rogersfrontpageonline.com
“The Police have rearrested the suspect and by tomorrow we will be proceeding to court,” Police Spokesman Sam Collins told FrontPageAfrica.
“We will provide more details by tomorrow (Wednesday); that is all I can say.”
The prime suspect, Jimmy Wonyehn, was rearrested Tuesday by the LNP.
Sodomy is a non-bailable crime, but Suspect Jimmy was released to his lawyers by the Police on grounds of lack of sufficient evidence to process him for court.
However, speaking to the family of the victim, they said they had no confidence in the Police until they saw the suspect before the court.
According to a family member, who spoke with FrontPage, the Police had been toying with the case since the inception.
The family member, who withheld his name of fear of reprisal, said the re-arrest of the suspect did not guarantee justice for them; they rather wanted to see the suspect before the court.
“The Police came here and did their investigation; all we are waiting for is to see the man who damaged our son in court,” the relative said.
The victim’s family alleged that friends and family members of the suspect had tried on several occasions to induce them with money to compromise the case.
“Those people can’t destroy my son and go free because I don’t have anything.
They want to take advantage of us because we do not have money,” the victim’s mother lamented.
She further narrated that her son is currently in a sad, confused and traumatized state.
“He will just stand and start yelling ‘They’re coming to rape me, they’re coming to rape me,’” his mother explained.
According to the mother of the victim, suspect Jimmy asked the boy to help him paint his apartment and in the process, he requested that her son went to Police Academy junction to collect additional paints from a black jeep that was parking there.
She further explained upon her son’s arrival at the junction, he was told to get in the car to collect the paint and in the process, according to her, he was sprayed, made dizzy and taken to an unknown location where he was allegedly sodomized.
Unlike cases of rape involving men, where much is being done in terms of prosecution and awareness, very little is heard or done about sodomy cases, involving men in Liberia.
The 17-year-old victim was allegedly gang sodomized in Paynesville three weeks ago.
The sodomy left the boy with serious pain in the rectum, stomach adding that he was finding it difficult to freely urinate.
The medical report from the Du-Port Health Center shows that the boy was tampered with and the health center has since been providing the victim with medical treatment. The Police have confirmed the medical report.
An earlier Police report released three weeks ago indicated that Suspect Jimmy, who allegedly lured the boy to the gang, was a neighbor to the family and is working at the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Chapter 14 of the Penal Law of Liberia states: “Offences involving danger to the person – among other things, criminalizes involuntary sodomy, as one who engages in deviant sexual intercourse under circumstance not stated in Section 14.72 [relating to aggravated involuntary sodomy] or 14.73 [relating to involuntary sodomy] has committed a first degree misdemeanor.
Last year, speaking at the launch of radio program for children, Gender Minister Julia Ducan-Cassell recognized the rising wave of abuse of teenage boys and called for more attention on boys as it is done to their female counterparts.
“Lots of our children are still being abused, our girls are being raped. As we launch this radio program, the children will be our guest, the men will be our guest, the women will be our guest, the girls will be our guest and the boys will also be our guest because our boys too are being sodomized,” she had noted.
In July 2015, Police in Sanniquellie, Nimba County arrested and turned over to the Eighth Judicial Circuit Court in Nimba County a 36-year-old man identified as Alex Dahn for allegedly sodomizing a six-year-old boy in the county.
A 10-year-old boy was also recently allegedly sodomized by a Nigerian national said to be a pastor.
The Juvenile Court at the Temple of Justice 2015 incarcerated at the Monrovia Central Prison a 17-year-old boy, Jerome Willie, for sodomizing a 10-year-old boy.
Defendant Willie, a resident of Paynesville, where the 10-year-old victim also lived, was on July 20 arrested by the LNP based upon a complaint filed by the victim’s parents, alleging that their son was sodomized by Willie.
The Liberian law prohibits consensual same-sex sexual activity, and the culture is strongly opposed to homosexuality.
Voluntary sodomy is a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to one year imprisonment. As of 2015, two persons were in Monrovia Central Prison for sodomy, one of whom had been in pretrial detention for more than three years.
In 2015, the Women and Children Protection Section (WACPS) of the LNP investigated 188 reported cases of rape, of which 59 were referred to as specialized cases, those ones involving juvenile and sodomy.
A few of the 59 cases referred to Court “E” during the year were forwarded to Criminal Court “C” for further judicial review, and all eight prosecutions during the year resulted in conviction and sentences ranging from one to seven years imprisonment.
The Sexual and Gender-based Crimes Unit within the Ministry of Justice has improved case management and increased the number of sexual offense indictments from 16 in 2014 to 147 in 2015.