A Circuit Court at Asokwa, Kumasi, Ghana has sentenced a Nigerian sex trafficker to five years imprisonment with hard labour for trafficking young girls from Nigeria to Konongo in the Ashanti region for prostitution.
Rose
Ikem, aged 40, who was convicted of human trafficking and assault this week, will
also compensate four of her victims, whom she lured from Nigeria, for GHȼ24,000
with each of them receiving GHȼ6,000.00.
Her
latest victims were aged between 17 and 24 years.
According
to police prosecution, the convict has been trafficking young girls from
Nigeria to Konongo, deploying them into prostitution, with some of them being
subjected to abuse.
On
April 23, 2024, police received a complaint from a resident of Konongo about
the treatment being meted out to the victims by the convict.
Police
proceeded to the Konongo SSNIT area residence of Ikem but met her absence.
According
to ASP Stephen Ofori who led the police prosecution, the police detected that
the victims were locked up in a room, and the whereabout of Ikem was unknown.
Police
then laid an ambush until she resurfaced and was subsequently arrested.
When
she was forced to open the room, police rescued two victims (name withheld)
with the two others who ran away being rescued the following day, with the help
of the complainant
The
court, presided over by His Honour Fred Obikyere, was told how Ikem tasked her
victims, who had worked between three months and two weeks, to make a daily
remittance of GHȼ500 to her. This amounted to a total of GHȼ89,000.
According
to ASP Ofori, any time the victims failed to meet their target, Ikem assaulted
them physically, causing one of the victims to fracture her left hand.
The
court sentenced her to 5 years with hard labour for trafficking and 12 months
for causing harm. Both sentences will run concurrently.
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