Blessing told Vanguard, “The first time my mother was not around, he took cane and was beating me and told me that if I messed up, he would kill me, that if I shouted or if my mummy heard anything about it, he was going to kill me.
“So the one that happened on Thursday, November 13, 2014, I told him that I would tell my mummy and I dared to see if he would kill me. So l told my mummy.
"He raped me four times, the first time was when my mother travelled to Makurdi, Benue State."
Blessing’s mother, Mrs Grace Richard, 30, said her daughter reported to her that the stepfather raped her but her husband denied it when she confronted him.
She confirmed that it was during the period she traveled to her home state (Benue) and left her daughter in the care of her stepfather that he first allegedly raped her.
"That was two months ago when I travelled to Makurdi and she told me immediately I came back,” the mother said.
“My husband denied and even threatened to beat me black and blue if l ever asked him such a question again."
Grace said she was not, in the real sense of it, married to the father of Blessing whom she had at the age of 17 before the father died in a motor accident last year.
Blessing’s mother said she and her current husband have been together for four years during which she had a boy child for him. The boy, she said, lives with her mother-in-law.
"We went back to the police station the following day after Richard was detained, only to be told that his father had bailed him.
"On getting back to Richard’s house after he was bailed, he tried to convince his neighbours to accept that Blessing was wayward, but his neighbours refused to play along with him. Rather they claimed they heard Blessing screaming on that Thursday but did know the reason," she added.
The investigating police officer, IPO, in charge of the case, said that Blessing was indeed pregnant but that investigations were in progress.
Richard had been re-arrested by the police.
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