Lovers Subject Two-Year Baby To Inhuman Treatment

But for the vigilance of a Pastor at Mankessim, a two-year-old baby boy would have lost his life through the cruelty of his biological father and step mother who allegedly locked him up in a room for days and left him to his fate.

For this inhuman act, a Cape Coast Magistrates Court presided
over by Mr. Narh Awuah on Thursday, remanded the father of the boy,
Francis Abeiku Sakyi, a 22-year-old trader from Mankessim, in Police
Custody.

The accused, who pleaded not guilty to the charges of exposing a
baby to harm and failing to provide the necessities of life for him,
would be arraigned on Wednesday July 6.

The police are on the heels of his lover and alleged accomplice,
one Ernestina Obeng, 19, who also has a one-year-old baby boy with the
accused and is currently on the run.

Prosecuting, Sergeant Samuel Amoako told the court that sometime
in September last year, the mother of the two-year-old boy, one Maame
Efia, also now at large, abandoned the boy in Sakyi’s room at
Mankessim with the reason that the accused had deliberately neglected
his son.

Sergeant Amoako said the accused who lived with his lover and
their one-year old baby boy, together maltreated the two-year-old
victim by giving him severe beatings anytime he soiled himself.
The Prosecutor alleged that they sometimes locked the
two-year-old toddler up in a room without food and water and
constantly subjected him to inhuman treatment until one Pastor Henry
Nortey, the complainant who lives in the same vicinity with them,
reported the case to the Mankessim Police in March this year.

According to him, the Police arrested the couple and bonded them
to be of good behaviour.

He said after sometime, the complainant visited their house
again and requested to see the boy but was told by the accused persons
that he had been sent to his grandmother’s hometown at Gomoa Boasi.

Not satisfied with the explanations given, the complainant who
had then become suspicious of them, again reported the case to the
Police who went to the house of the accused person and when a locked
room was forced open they found the two-year toddler lying sick, weak
and helpless.

The accused was arrested and in his caution statement failed to
give any tangible explanation for his action, the Prosecutor added.
Meanwhile, the toddler has been given medical attention at the
Regional Hospital and is currently at the Cape Coast office of the
Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU).