By Francess Wright
The Family Support Unit in the Sierra Leone Police has placed a warrant of arrest on Hallie Chokpelleh a 32-year-old man for repeatedly penetrating a 16-year-old minor in Freetown.
According to the Director of family Support Unit – SLP CSP Fatmata Daboh Kamara the warrant was issued after preliminary investigation of the case after the case was transferred to the Head Quarters of Criminal Investigation Department due to a complaint of delay in investigations made by the survivor’s mother.
CSP Daboh Kamara said according to the file a case of sexual penetration was reported at the family support Unit of calaba town police station at around 900hrs on the 16th December 2021, and the victim was issued a medical examination report.
She said the police is currently searching for the suspect, one Hallie Chokpelleh a 32 old man who happens to be an uncle to the victim. The suspect has been on the run since the discovery of his heinous crime and efforts are made to track him including the issuance of a warrant for his arrest.
She asserted that the police are doing everything humanely possible to bring him to answer to his crime against the girl.
Speaking to this medium the mother of the 16-year-old survivor who happens to be a journalist and women and girls rights advocate said she is devasted by the shocking discovery.
According to her, for more than a year prior to this revelation, her daughter wrote her several notes during these periods on various times containing contents that were suggesting that she was under duress or being abused in some way, but she never mentioned it clearly. “But having seen and dealt with a lot of such stories that ended up being sexual abuse cases, I became suspicious and I continued talking to my daughter trying to cajole her to tell me about what is making her feel worthless and not part of our family and also repeatedly talking about suicide in most of these letters she wrote to me, but my efforts were not good enough to make her tell me”, she said.
She furthered that her daughter continued writing similar notes from time to time while she continued her frantic effort to find out what was eating up her daughter’s life, until the night of the 15th December 2021 at around 23:47hrs when she quietly walked into the bed room of her daughter and collected her mobile device where she discovered several in appropriate whatsapp messages from the uncle cohersing the girl to sneak into his bedroom for sexual activities and calling her inappropriate names seeing some conversations not expected from an uncle.
She described it as disgusting and traumatic. “I know the catastrophic and everlasting impact this will have in my daughter’s life”, she cried. “Before people could help me that morning, he ran left the house in the presence of his other siblings of the suspect and my husband who works out of town but came in that very morning. “I feel disappointed and betrayed by my husband’s entire family they aided his escape I believe,” the woman emphasised. “I couldn’t shout for outside help thinking about the stigma that will cause to my daughter in the community” she said, “I fight for other children but here I am struggling to get my daughter’s violator to answer for his crime, I don’t think the police is working hard enough to get him,” she lamented.
