Enoch Gbinyiam, a pastor with Winners Chapel Church, Omuo-Ekiti, was sentenced to one-year imprisonment on Thursday, June 13, by an Ado-Ekiti High Court for defiling a minor in his church.

Gbinyiam was dragged before the court on a one-count charge levelled against him. The State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Julius Ajiba, had told the court that the pastor r*ped the daughter of a member of the church during her visit to the vicarage.

According to Aliba, 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.

“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.”

Aliba told the court that the police were alerted and the pastor was arrested and then charged to court. He said that the offence contravened section 2 of the Gender Based Violence (Prohibition) Law, 2019. Four witnesses and tendered two exhibits to prove his case.

The pastor, who spoke through his counsel, Adeyinka Opaleke, pleaded not guilty to the charge against him. He called one witness and tendered an evidence in defence of himself.

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 Correctional Centre.