What promises to become an epic legal battle between two countries, appears to be unfolding over an alleged sexual assault on the 5-year-old daughter of a Canadian lady, Ms Queen Moses. Ms Moses who came into the country on the invitation of a company wanting to do business with her company, said the cleaner of a hotel in Abuja Central Business District, Bolingo Hotel, one Mr. Okon, attempted to rape her 5-year-old daughter, Elena. She is also accusing a lady, Miss Bright, she reportedly employed as nanny, of abetting the sexual act.
Following the discovery of the act, both Okon and Bright were dragged to the Central Business District police station where they made statements denying the allegation. The duo were later also dragged to the FCT office of the National Agency Trafficking In Persons, NAPTIP where they were detained for 5 days and later granted bail.
When LEADERSHIP met Bright, an Ogoni indigene in Rivers State, she said she had not recovered from the trauma of the detention insisting that she was unjustly detained. According to her, she was employed as a cook by Ms Queen but later detailed to look after her daughter.
She said they accused her of conniving with Okon to sexually assault the girl kept under her care. Asked if the cleaner actually carried out the act, Bright said she was not aware of such a thing pointing out that the General hospital where the girl was taken for medical examination confirmed that there was no sexual assault on the little girl.
She however alleged that Ms. Moses roped her into the case when she refused to collaborate her allegation against the Bolingo cleaner, Okon. She said Moses was heavily indebted to Bolingo and wanted to evade paying the piled up bills and so cooked up the allegation against Okon who she said was the cleaner assigned to clean the Moses suite in the hotel.
When LEADERSHIP contacted Ms Moses, she gave her lawyer, Hon. West Idahosa, permission to brief this reporter. According to Idahosa, days after the General Hospital’s report said there was no act of sexual assault on the little girl, she broke out with blisters on her lips and tongue which was later confirmed in a private hospital to be herpes.
He said following this diagnoses, his client decided to institute a criminal action against Okon, for sexually assaulting the Canadian child, Bright, for criminal negligence which result in the assault and Bolingo Hotel for not doing anything to protect her customers from such attacks.
He said the client is asking for the sum of N580million as damages for what he said is a life-long disease inflicted on the little girl. “We are in court already for the civil aspect of the matter.
The little girl was in Bright’s care and if she was sexually molested Bright’s best bet would be to run away and say nothing happened. The Okon’s statement to the police was simply that, “I did not go to that room at that time. I didn’t go there at all”.
“The nanny’s statement is different. The nanny said Okon came, knocked on the door while she was taking her bath and when she was in the bathroom she came out to open the door and she saw Okon. My take is that Okon comes to sleep with Bright and in the process exposed the little girl to corruption.
“Bright told the police that Elena, the five year old girl, told her that there was something she wanted to tell her but she should promise that she would not tell anybody, not even her mother. She started by saying “kiss, kiss”, “I asked her what kiss” and she said Okon kissed her. If Okon kissed her where were you when Okon kissed her because you are paid to look after the girl. She was still telling the story before her mother came in and she stopped talking. If Okon did kiss the girl where were you because you have failed to keep custody of the little girl.
“Immediately this thing happened she was taken to Maitama General Hospital, where she was examined and the medical report said there was no problem, everybody left, even though the mother was not happy. But eight later after, the little girl she breaks out with sores on her mouth, her tongue and then the mother decided to take her to her regular hospital where she obtained a diagnosis which revealed that the little girl now has herpes. According to medical report of herpes, it is a life-long disease,” he said.
Idahosa said when Elena travelled to her home country of Canada and immediately she entered Canada, she was detained. He said Elena had to go through medical examinations which further showed that she was infected with herpes.
“We want a declaration that Okon molested the girl and that the fourth defendant, Bright aided and abetted the molestation we even said that Bolingo condoned the molestation so we are asking for N500million and the damages would amount to N580million and we have filed very copious documentation to show that somebody was definitely negligent because a 28 year old nanny is not baby,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Ogoni community in Abuja which Bright belongs, angered by the development have vowed to pursue the case to its logical conclusion. Speaking with the president of the Rivers Community in Abuja and member of the board of trustees of the Ogoni Welfare Association, Chief Bright Sawuje, the community said they would take the matter to the supreme court to defend their daughter, should the need arise.
“After an extensive discussion of the Ogoni Welfare Association meeting, on behalf of the board, I can authoritatively say that the board has resolved that in view of the allegation levelled against a member of which we have done our own in-house investigation which we have found to be unfounded.
“We have decided that the association will ventilate our anger in the high court for an unlawful arrest and detention of an Ogoni woman. And we will not stop there. We will proceed to institute an action against the NAPTIP as well as the Ms Queen in the FCT High court for defamation of character and we have already contacted our lawyers to see to that because we felt that in this 21 century, it is uncalled for an Ogoni son or daughter to be so humiliated.
“We take serious exception to this allegation and it will interest you to know that we will fight this matter even up to the Supreme Court. We are determined and we are resolute. In as much as we don’t support criminality, this is an outright case of victimisation of the truth,” he said. .
Source: OgoniNews
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