Defiled girl, 13, found dead

.... Weeks after testifying in court of carnal knowledge by stepdad When about a month ago Abigail Agorvor, a thirteen-year-old girl of Kluma-Dorfor in the North Tongu District of the Volta region appeared in a Ho magistrate court and testified to how her step-father, Emmanuel Ameka, 40, blind-folded her and defiled her, little did anyone suspect that she would not appear in court again to be cross-examined and to help in further investigations.

But two Fridays ago, on August 20, residents of the village were dumb-founded, when word went round that her dead body was found in a locked room, where she resided with her mother, after she got missing for a few hours.

According to residents, Abigail suddenly could not be found among her peers, and when after a couple of hours she failed to surface, an alarm was raised.

A search party of several youth later found her body in a locked room, after they had broken in through the window.

But while the mystery surrounding her sudden death was yet to be unraveled, the body was buried at the local cemetery less than 24 hours later.

Before her death, the girl and mother had been testifying in a Ho court, and accusing Emmanuel Ameka, her stepfather, of defiling her a year ago.

The mother narrated how in mid-July 2003, she 'caught' her husband in bed with her daughter, and how he (accused) confessed to her and some elders of the village of wrong-doing.

The case was later reported to the Juapong police on July 25, last year, after the girl allegedly suffered severe abdominal pains with offensive vaginal discharge.

According to information on a police medical form issued on the matter at 11.40am that day, and signed by the Chief Inspector of the station, the late Abigail personally complained to the police that she was 'carnally known by the step-father.'

A medical officer's report clearly confirmed that she had a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) and other disorders in her private part.

The stepfather, The Chronicle gathered, then 'vamoosed' from town, and it took the police five months before the Madina police in the Greater Accra Region arrested him. He was detained for a while, prosecuted, and later granted bail.

At a time, The Chronicle Social Justice reporter, who had been closely following the pace of developments on the serious allegation since December last year, had to alert the authorities on what was then being seen as lackadaisical behaviour of some of those handling the case and the snail pace of progress.

At least, nearly five months ago, this reporter spoke to the sources close to the regional police command, regional state attorney, and regional office of the Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) of the Police Service, about the apparent 'frustrations' from the investigator and prosecutor.

Naturally, the strange and sudden death of the teenage girl did not only come with shock, but also the pain that goes with the fact that at a time when she was only living with her mother and stepfather in the same room, the person who allegedly defiled her 14 months ago on her parents' matrimonial bed, could not be caught and punished, even with the victim and her mother testifying of what they knew and saw.

When the paper contacted him at his West Kpong residence recently, Mr. Kwablah Agorvor, unemployed, Abigail's biological father, was short of words.

He said the harrowing and traumatic pains the girl went through, after the alleged defilement, was more than he could bear, and described the death as too strange to accept.

Mr. Agorvor simply called on government and security agencies to go every length to find out if there was any foul play or any connection between the alleged defilement and the death of his daughter.

Abduction, murder and suicide are three theories that cannot be ruled out in a serious quest to establish the truth about the death of this teenager at Klumah-Dofor, a development that can give a twist to an on-going case in court.

She did not get justice early enough from the defilement. Would her 'controversial' death become a shortcut to establishing some 'hidden truths'? Justice delayed is justice denied.