How Employee Molested My 7-year-old Daughter, Boss Tells Court

The Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Court in Ikeja had heard how a man, Joe Ojedu, allegedly molested his employer’s sevenyear-old daughter (name withheld).

The prosecutor, Bukola Okeowo, led in evidence the second and third prosecution witnesses, the victim’s mother and father.

The second prosecution witness (PW2), a mother of three, told the court that her last child and second daughter opened up to her about the defendant touching her breasts after she saw them sitting too close to each other on a dark evening at the front of the family living room.

The PW2 told the court that the defendant was an employee tasked with ironing clothes in her dry cleaning and laundry services run inside her compound close to the duplex where she resides with her family.

She referred to the defendant as “close to the family,” to the point that she included him as a partaker in the food that she cooked for her family.

The mother of the survivor said it was on her way home on February 20, 2023, that she saw both the defendant and her last daughter, who was seven years old at the time, sitting in a dark corner at around 7:30 pm.

She told the court how bewildered she was that her house was dark and that she called the defendant’s phone to ask why the generator was not turned on.

The PW2 told the court that her call to the defendant went through, but he did not pick it up. As she walked into her compound and saw the defendant sitting “too close” to her sevenyear-old daughter, the defendant quickly picked up his phone and pretended to be on a call.

The woman said she was unhappy with the sight and immediately took her daughter upstairs alongside her two other children, whom she met inside the living room pressing their phones. She began to scold them for allowing their little sister to sit outside with the defendant in the dark.

She told the court that she was already suspicious, and when she asked her seven-year-old daughter to tell her the truth about whether the defendant touched her body, the girl replied and said, “You will beat me.”