The general overseer of The Beloved Chapel in Agbado, Ogun State, has admitted to defiling a 14-year-old choir member to the police but claims he has no memory of how it happened.

The teenage girl's mother complained to Agbado Divisional Police Headquarters that the pastor of the church, located at 9, Iyaniwura Street, off Owonikoko Street, Agbado, lured her daughter into his room and forcibly slept with her when she traveled to treat herself of a particular ailment. The police then arrested the 38-year-old pastor.

The pastor "admitted defiling the victim" while being questioned after his arrest, according to Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer Abimbola Oyeyemi, even as he "pleaded for forgiveness."

According to him, his family and that of the victim were very close, but he didn’t know how and why such a thing happened to him, "Oyeyemi quoted him as saying."

Preliminary investigation, it was said, revealed that the suspect would have been arrested long ago, but the mother of the victim frustrated the move because she did not want to offend her pastor.

But when the victim had been continuously bleeding from her private parts since the incident, which happened in October 2021, she was left with no other option than to allow police to wade into the matter.

“The victim, who claimed that the pastor was the first person to sleep with her, is currently recuperating in a hospital.”

Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police in the State, Lanre Bankole, has ordered the transfer of the case to the State CIID for further investigation and possible prosecution.

Bankole warned parents to stop the habit of covering anybody who indecently assaulted their daughters, no matter how close they are to such people, saying they too may be liable for prosecution for compounding a felony.