A Lagos court has sentenced a 63-year-old pastor to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of raping a church member’s daughter, concluding a nine-year legal process that exposed a grave abuse of spiritual authority.
Justice Rahman Oshodi of the Lagos State Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja delivered the verdict on Thursday, convicting Chris Douglas, General Overseer of Peculiar Generation Assembly Church in Oshodi, for exploiting his position of spiritual authority to abuse the victim.
The court described the conduct as a gross breach of trust, noting that the victim and her family had regarded Douglas as a trusted father figure. Justice Oshodi held that rather than honour that trust, the convict betrayed it in a deeply harmful way.
The court heard that the assaults took place at a hotel on several occasions, and that the victim suffered severe psychological trauma as a result, including depression and recurring suicidal thoughts.
The prosecution, led by Director of Public Prosecutions Dr Babajide Martins, called five witnesses including the victim, her mother, and medical expert Dr Maria Fadaka. The victim told the court that the abuse began in September 2017, describing Douglas as someone she trusted completely as a spiritual father. Her mother testified that when she confronted the pastor, he wept and attributed his actions to the devil before begging for forgiveness in front of church elders.
Douglas denied the allegations, claiming the encounters were consensual. Justice Oshodi rejected that defence, ruling that the totality of the evidence before the court established rape beyond a reasonable doubt.
The court discharged Douglas on six counts of defilement and sexual assault due to insufficient proof, but convicted him on three counts of rape and sentenced him to life imprisonment on each count, with the sentences to run concurrently.
The court also ordered that Douglas’s name be entered into the Lagos State Sexual Offenders Register.
