A-G takes over Jesus One Touch case

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 (Page 3)

Story: Mabel Aku Baneseh
THE Attorney-General’s Department has taken over the prosecution of the case involving the Founder and General Overseer of the Jesus Blood Prophetic Ministry, Prophet Nana Kofi Yirenkyi, alias Jesus One Touch.
The department is expected to file an affidavit in opposition to the accused’s motion for stay of proceedings in the case pending his appeal against an order to open his defence and answer incest charges levelled against him.
A Chief State Attorney, Ms Helen Kwawukume, informed the circuit court, presided over by Mrs Georgina Mensah-Datsa, that her outfit had taken over the case, for which reason she needed a short adjournment to be able to file the State’s response to One Touch’s application.
The court obliged and, accordingly, adjourned the matter to June 1, 2010.
Yirenkyi has pleaded not guilty to two counts of incest and defilement and has been refused bail.
As usual, his family, friends and sympathisers thronged the court premises to give him moral support.
The court, on May 7, 2010, ordered Yirenkyi to open his defence after it had dismissed his submission of ‘no case’, but his counsel, Mr Adomako Acheampong, on May 11, 2010 informed the court that his client was appealing against the its decision.
Counsel also indicated that the accused person had filed an application for stay of proceedings pending the outcome of the appeal.
The facts of the case are that the 10-year-old victim confessed that the accused person, after bouts of sexual intercourse with her, wiped off the sperms from his sexual organ and the fluids from her vagina with a white handkerchief.
According to the prosecution, the victim, who was born out of wedlock, lived with her mother at Dawu in Akuapem until 2005 when she relocated to Accra to live with her father at McCarthy Hill to attend school.
It said in the latter part of 2007, the accused person began having sex with the victim, each time before he organised a church service.
In November 2009, the accused person gave the victim’s mother, who happened to be the complainant in the case, an opportunity to hold discussions with the victim about a bad behaviour she was exhibiting.
During the interaction with her mother, the victim revealed her ordeal to her mother, which resulted in the woman lodging a complaint with the police.