Rapist starts 20 years jail

Oda (E/R), Sept. 26, GNA- Ebenezer Siaw, the palm wine taper who jumped from a one-storey court building after he had been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, has been discharged from the Oda Government Hospital.

Siaw, 36, was on Monday convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in hard labour for raping a teenager, but decided to end his life by jumping from the storey building that housed the Akyem Swedru Circuit Court.

Siaw managed to outwit the security at the court and jumped from the high one storey building to the ground, after the trial judge, Mr. Edward Kwame Bosompem Apenkwah, had announced his conviction and sentence.

The convict, who became unconscious after the fall, was admitted at the Oda Government Hospital, where he was treated and discharged. He was escorted from the hospital on Wednesday morning to the Oda Police Barracks from where he was conveyed to the Nsawam Medium Security Prison to start his jail term.

The rapist who interacted with the Ghana News Agency at Oda, looked feeble, with swollen legs and complained of pains in his waist and that his genital organ had become weak and found it difficult to urinate. He was even carried from the cell by some of the inmates to the counter-back, where the GNA spoke to him.

Siaw said when the judgement was delivered he became disturbed and preferred dying to serving the jail term.

According to him, he was remanded in police custody for one year two months during the trial and that: "I was not prepared whatsoever to have additional years in custody".

When asked why the trial lasted so long, Siaw said the police told him the victim had her private part badly mutilated and had to allow for her treatment, adding that his (Siaw) witness in the case lived at Bogoso in the Central Region where the police had to escort him there, but they could not trace the witness.

He denied having sex with the six-year-old girl and described the conviction and sentence as wrong and harsh, but when reminded that convictions were based on evidence adduced at the trial, and sentence stipulated by law, the convict stated: "Because I don't have any money, I was sentenced".

Siaw said the victim's junior father brought him from Bososo near Begoro to Kade area to tap palm wine for him, but his master's wife often took his pay from him, a situation that he later refused, and that made her to frame up the charge against him, describing it as: "a wonderful allegation".