London: A pilot who travelled hundreds of miles to meet and rape a 12-year-old girl he met on Instagram has been jailed. Kwame Yeboah, 30, first made contact with the child in late 2025. She initially told him she was 17, and he travelled from his home in Reading to Wirral, Merseyside, in February.
According to Ghana Web, the Crown Prosecution Service stated it would have been "obvious" to Yeboah, a UK national and British Airways employee, "that [the victim] was a very young child." Yeboah pleaded guilty to rape and sexual assault and was sentenced to eight years and four months in jail. He was also given a 15-year restraining order.
Yeboah had been working for British Airways since 2023 as a First Officer, as noted in his LinkedIn profile. He also spent more than 17 years playing basketball and refereeing at Basketball England. After he first messaged the victim, the court heard Yeboah sent the girl intimate pictures of himself, and the conversations became increasingly sexual.
The Crown Prosecution Service reported that Yeboah called the girl about twice a week, making her believe she was important to him and that he cared about her. A few months after the first contact, Yeboah met the girl in person and drove her around before taking her to an isolated location and assaulting her three times.
The child later told Merseyside Police she struggled to process what was happening and felt nervous and confused. A few days later, a friend of the victim informed her mother about the incident. It was reported to the police, and Yeboah was identified using the details he had given the child. When arrested and interviewed, he answered "no comment" to all questions.
On 22 April, Yeboah pleaded guilty to three counts of rape of a girl under 13 and one count of sexual assault of a girl under 13. Thomas Hanlon, senior crown prosecutor, commented that Yeboah would have known early on that the child was not the age she initially claimed to be, as she spoke about school and sent images of herself in a school uniform. Hanlon added that Yeboah groomed the victim into believing she was in a relationship with someone who cared about her, whereas he was an adult who exploited her for his own sexual gratification.