Church Party Guest Jailed For Raping 12 Year-Old

A church birthday party guest is starting a thirteen-and-a-half year prison sentence after shoving a 12 year-old attendee into bushes and twice raping her.

Ghana-born Kofi Prempeh, 28 - nicknamed ‘Africa’ - ignored the girl’s pleas to stop and her desperate attempts to push him off in the dark park as he walked her home. 

Prempeh, of Wide Way, Mitcham pleaded guilty to two counts of raping the girl in the park near Leighton Street, West Croydon on August 4, 2018 three days into his trial.

“How you can have gone from a young man with no history with the police to raping a child is difficult to fathom,” Croydon Crown Court Judge Elizabeth Smaller told him.

“It involved a considerable degree of violence in a public park late at night.

“She spent a period of time terrified she was pregnant and that must have added to the terror this young girl felt and she says there is not a day that goes by that what you did does not interfere with her life and she is still in counselling.

“I find you do pose a risk to young females and it is necessary to protect the public from you.”

Prosecutor Nicola Merrick told the court last Friday: “He claims he did not know how old she was at the time, but the Crown do not accept that assertion. He knew when he engaged with her that she was a child, aged twelve years-old.

“She had gone to a party organised in a church hall that the defendant had also attended and she overstayed longer than her mother agreed.”

Prempeh was not a stranger to the girl, who had attended alone.

“The defendant left the party with her at 10pm or so and arrived at her home address at around midnight, a journey that would normally take twenty minutes,” added the prosecutor.

“The route he took her on was through the park. It was dark and he pulled up her dress and pulled down her knickers.

“He warned her that she was not to tell her mother or anyone else what he had done and she experienced some bleeding the following days.”

Prempeh was arrested three months later and denied raping the girl, only finally admitting his guilt after the trial began and she had given evidence and been cross-examined.

During that trial the court heard the girl’s family believed she would be safe amongst fellow-churchgoers they knew.

Miss Merrick told the jury: “That evening there was a birthday party and the congregation attended and the girl’s mother thought members of the church would keep an eye on her daughter.

“She was outside the church when the defendant came out and spoke to her while holding a bottle of beer, which she thought was Guinness.

“She believes he tried to persuade her not to go home and as she walked through the park he was beside her.

“Mr Prempeh pushed her down into some bushes and pulled up her dress and touched her breasts and pulled her knickers down.

“She as shouting at him to leave her alone,” explained the prosecutor. “She was upset and tried to push him off.

“She was saying: ‘Stop, stop. There are people that can see you,’ but that did not seem to put him off.

“She was crying and he could see she was upset and told her to stop. She could not stop herself and he shouted: ‘No more crying.’

“The complainant phoned her mother and told her she was okay and the defendant kept telling the girl she was not to tell anyone what he had done to her and that it would be bad for her.

“The defendant told her: ‘If I find out you’ve said anything to anyone there will be trouble.’

“The girl confided in her cousin and three months later told her family what had happened.”

Prempeh’s lawyer John Hunter told the court on Friday there was little point making him subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order on release. “There is every possibility of him being deported in any event.

“He has expressed the shame he feels on a daily basis and during his time in custody he realises just how inappropriate his behaviour was and questioned if it was worth carrying on living.

“The impact on him has had a significant effect. It was not planned in any way, it was opportunistic and something that he bitterly regrets and will do so for the rest of his life.

“She was not pulled into bushes or anything of that sort and she is not entirely reliable in the evidence she did give. There was evidence of some accepting of what happened and wanting it to happen.”

However, Judge Smaller challenged this, remarking: “Well, on her evidence that is what happened and stating otherwise doesn’t do your client many favours.”

The judge told Prempeh: “Your counsel’s propositions are somewhat of an anachronism to me. I do not accept these submissions or that this girl suggested these acts should take place.”

The judge also extended the licence period following Prempeh’s release by four years and ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register indefinitely and added his name to the barring list, which prohibits working with children and vulnerable adults.