Watchman Jailed 25 Years For Incest



By William Yaw Owusu
Monday, 12 June 2006

At the time that Ghanaians were preoccupied with experiencing the eclipse of the sun on March 29, a 40-year-old watchman of East Legon, in Accra, apparently had other thoughts.

To him, the period when the moon covered the sun was the perfect cover for a plan that he had hatched against his daughter. He locked her up and raped her.

Samuel Agbeko was on Friday, sentenced by an Accra Circuit Court to a-25-year jail term. He wept bitterly when the sentence was pronounced.

Agbeko was convicted on his own plea and when asked to explain his action, he told the court in Ewe: “I do not know the satan which came over me for me to do this to my own daughter.”

He said “I did it to her and have since regretted my action. I will plead with the court to tamper justice with mercy.”

But the judge, Mrs. Jennifer Tagoe, retorted: “If you can do this to your own biological daughter, then other women are in trouble.”

Mrs. Tagoe said Agbeko was not the type of man who should be allowed to move freely in society because he knew what he was about and that was why he invited his daughter to his house.

When the victim was asked by the judge how she felt about the sentence she replied, “I am happy that my father is going to leave me in peace.”

She said before the incident, he had once threatened to kill her after he saw her chatting with one of her uncles.

Chief Inspector Margaret Awuni, prosecuting, told the court that at about 6pm on March 29, Agbeko invited his daughter, who lives with her grandmother at Madina, to his metal container home at Madina New Road to wash his clothes.

However, when she got there, the girl realised that there was nothing to be washed so she decided to leave, but her father asked her to prepare light soup for him, which she did.

“After preparing the soup, the daughter brought out a mattress and relaxed outside the container,” the prosecutor told the court.

When the eclipse occurred she moved to the room and joined her father, but he quickly locked the door and forcibly had sexual intercourse with her.