Lecturer remanded for inflicting cutlass wounds on teenage son

The Ho District Court has remanded into police custody, a lecturer at the Ho School of Hygiene for slashing his 14-year-old son with a cutlass as an act of discipline.

The accused, 41-year-old Sampson Quaye Agbavitor has been charged with causing unlawful harm and the use of an offensive weapon.

According to Prosecutors, the accused claimed he committed the act to serve as punishment for wrongdoing the teenager committed in school. 

The boy, a JHS pupil, was reported to have smudged the face of a classmate with sanitizer. 

The incident led to school authorities inviting the accused for a disciplinary hearing which he failed to honour.

The court was told that not only did the accused refuse to honour the invitation from the school, that he also ignored a letter of a reminder of the said meeting. 

Authorities are said to have disallowed the boy from writing two subjects of the end-of-term examinations – the result, which led the boy to be subjected to beatings and cutlass wounds from the accused. 

The incident was reported to the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) by a neighbor. 

Police said he admitted to the offence in his caution statement, claiming that the act was to discipline his son.  

The boy on the other hand will be kept at the Department of Social Workers after he is discharged from the hospital.  

The court adjourned the matter to April 21, 2022.