By Izunna Okafor, Awka
A pastor with Winners Chapel Church (popularly known as Winners Church), Pastor Enoch Gbinyiam, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for raping a daughter of one of her church members (name withheld).
Popularly known as Pastor Enoch, the pastor was convicted over the week, by an Ado-Ekiti High Court after he was dragged before the court by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the state, Julius Ajiba, who told the court that the pastor raped the daughter of a member of the church during her visit to the pastor’s house.
Ajiba told the court that 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.
According to him, “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 v*gina.”
This, he said, led to alerting the police who arrested the pastor was arrested, and interrogated him. He added that the Pastor, thereafter, was charged to court.
According to Ajiba, who produced four witnesses and tendered two exhibits to prove his case, the offence contravened section 2 of the Gender Based Violence (Prohibition) Law, 2019.
However, speaking through his counsel, Adeyinka Opaleke, the Pastor pleaded not guilty to the charge against him, and further called one witness and tendered an evidence in defence of himself.
After hearing from both parties, 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 prison.
