Rapist charged with seeking hit man to kill victim

From its start, the case contained tragic twists: A woman from war-ravaged Sierra Leone had won a lottery and moved to the United States, only to be raped by a countryman who befriended her at her job in West Chester.

Then there were the pleas from her family - even her mother - to drop the charges, in keeping with some of the West African country's traditions.

And now, the record in Commonwealth vs. Foday P. Kanu includes a new charge: attempting to hire a hit man.

Kanu, 36, convicted in January of raping the coworker he had met at a West Chester nursing home, is now accused of trying to hire a man from behind bars to murder her.

Kanu, formerly of Broomall, was arraigned Tuesday in a Skippack district court on two counts of criminal solicitation to commit homicide, a week after his lawyer, Jack McMahon, had argued that his client had not received a fair trial.

In January, a jury convicted Kanu of rape and related offenses after a four-day trial. He was sentenced in March to 16 to 32 years in prison.

But Kanu had other plans, according to the latest criminal complaint.

He told a fellow inmate in Graterford Prison on June 2 that he was not going to "wait for the conviction to be overturned," the complaint said.

That inmate's mother had alerted police.

Investigators went to work. They recorded a conversation in which Kanu said he wanted the rape victim killed for about $4,500, the complaint said.

That wasn't all. Prison officials also intercepted two letters Kanu wrote to his brother in May - letters in which Kanu reasoned that without the rape victim, "they have no case against me," according to the complaint.

Court records say the rape victim came to the United States from Sierra Leone in 2001 after surviving that nation's decadelong civil war and winning a government-run lottery. She began attending nursing school and eventually became a U.S. citizen.

She met Kanu, who shared her heritage, at Barclay Friends, a West Chester nursing home where they both worked.

She told police that she had loaned Kanu money, but that when she sought repayment in 2006, he began a pattern of sexual attacks that would continue for two years. She spoke to police after she ended up in the hospital - an assault on July 22, 2008, had left her burned and unconscious, records said.

But the victim, whose identity is being withheld by The Inquirer because of the nature of the offense, failed to appear at subsequent hearings, and the District Attorney's Office withdrew the charges.

Later, investigators said they learned the victim was being threatened with "black magic voodoo" by Kanu's friends - some of whom doused a goat with kerosene in Sierra Leone and set it afire as a warning to her, court records said.

She was also pressured by relatives, including her mother, to marry Kanu, the records said, despite the fact that she already had a husband in Sierra Leone. In August 2008, the victim's step-uncle flew to the United States and told authorities that prosecuting Kano "might lead to violence between family members in his country and unhappy consequences for her," the records said.

The case reflects a tradition that Sierra Leone's leaders have struggled to eradicate. In 2005, a national panel recommended "that the government campaign against the customary practice whereby a victim of rape is obliged to marry the rapist," according to an article reprinted by the United Nations.

By January 2009, the West Chester woman had changed her mind and decided to press her complaint after all. She had become affiliated with a church group that assured her she could not be victimized again by voodoo, court records said. The Chester County District Attorney's Office refiled the rape case against Kanu and won a conviction.

In arguing for a lengthy prison term, Assistant District Attorney Deborah Ryan cited the trauma to the victim and the defendant's lack of remorse.

According to court records, Kanu told a West Chester detective: "I am her boyfriend. I can do what I want."

A preliminary hearing on the new charges is scheduled for Sept. 15.

Kanu's lawyer, McMahon, did not return a telephone call on Tuesday seeking comment on the new charges.

As for McMahon's Aug. 31 arguments seeking a new trial on the original rape charge, a judge has taken them under advisement.