A cleric with Winners Chapel Church, Omuo-Ekiti, Pastor Enoch Gbinyiam, will be spending the rest of his life in prison custody as he has been sentenced to life imprisonment for drugging and defiling one of the members minor inside the church in Ekiti State.
P.M.EXPRESS reports that it was the judgment of the Ado-Ekiti High Court for defiling a minor in his church as he was found guilty and sentenced accordingly under the Criminal Laws of the State.
The convict, Gbinyiam, was arraigned before the Court on a one-count charge levelled against him, which attracts maximum punishment for the alleged offence.
The State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Julius Ajiba, had told the Court that the pastor raped a church member’s daughter during her visit to the vicarage.
According to Ajiba, the victim usually visited the vicarage to assist the pastor’s wife with house chores, teach and help his young children in their school assignments.
“It was during one of her visits to the mission house that the defendant sedated a bottle of Fanta and offered her to drink.”
“The minor took the Fanta and slept off only to wake up and found out that she was bleeding profusely from her private part.”
Ajiba told the Court that the Police were alerted and the pastor was arrested before he was then charged to Court. He said that the offence contravened Section 2 of the Gender Based Violence (Prohibition) Law, 2019. Four witnesses and tendered two exhibits to prove his case.
The pastor, who spoke through his counsel, Adeyinka Opaleke, pleaded not guilty to the charge against him. He called one witness and tendered an evidence in defence of himself.
However, the Presiding Judge, Justice O.I.O. Ogunyemi, ruled that the prosecution proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and then convicted the defendant and sentenced him to life imprisonment in a correctional centre.