Court sentences paedophile to 25 years imprisonment

Tema, Oct. 16, GNA - Tema Circuit Court A, on Thursday sentenced a US citizen to 25 years imprisonment, in hard labour for defilement.

Patrick Kent Labash, a 65-year-old retired teacher, was convicted on his own plea for having unnatural canal knowledge of seven minors, at Adjomankope near Sege in the Dangme East District.

The Court ordered that the convict should be repatriated after serving his sentence.

Labash was sentenced to a 25-year jail term each for one count of having unnatural canal knowledge and seven counts of defilement. The sentences are to run concurrently.

He was convicted on his own plea of guilty on the first charge, while he was pronounced guilty by the trial judge, Mrs Lorinda Owusu, on the other seven counts.

The paedophile, who was dressed in a white T-shirt and green trousers, had to be helped to the dock by two police officials as he was limping on both legs.

Giving the ruling, the presiding judge said all the eight victims comprising minors between three and 12 years, corroborated the facts given by the prosecution.

Mrs Owusu said in her evidence, one of the victims, a three-year-old girl, said "the convict asked me to suck his manhood, which I did after which he gave me GHp20.00, and toffee, and watched movies. I have done that on four occasions".

Mrs Owusu added that the convict, who did not call any witness, claimed the pornographic pictures of his activities, which were retrieved from his computer laptop, were not real, because he created them out of his imagination.

The judge noted that a court photographic expert, however, confirmed that the pictures were genuine, adding that the tattoo she saw on the hand of the faceless whiteman in the pornographic recordings, was the same one on Labash's left hand.

She expressed disgust at the offence committed by the paedophile, saying, "The victims are young to be your grandchildren and you defiled them in a disgusting manner."

"The offence is against public morality and society frowns on it, our courts will descend greatly on perpetrators of such acts," she added.

Mrs Owusu said the sentence "should serve as a deterrent to foreigners who think they can hide in third world countries and exploit innocent children through such acts".

The case for the prosecution was that Labash has been luring children to his residence with money, toffee, food and movies, where he asked them to suck his erected manhood, discharged semen into their mouths and instructed them to swallow it.

GNA