Published: October 21, 2026
MONROVIA — The JFK Medical Center report that former National Security Agency official Peter Bon Jallah is using to show a 16-year-old boy suffered no anal trauma leaves out what the hospital’s own nurses recorded. According to their notes, the boy arrived in pain, could not sit, and was put on opioid painkillers and drugs to prevent HIV infection.
By Lennart Dodoo
A nurse has testified that she saw lacerations and bruises in the boy’s anus. The report itself records an abrasion there.
Jallah, 63, is on trial before Criminal Court ‘E’ at the Temple of Justice on charges of gang rape, statutory rape and kidnapping. He has pleaded not guilty and chose a bench trial, which means Judge Wesseh Alphonsus Wesseh Sr. will decide the verdict without a jury. Jallah was the deputy director general at the NSA when the allegations surfaced. He was dismissed and then arrested on Jan. 7. Two unidentified men were charged in absentia.
The defense filed the three-page report on Oct. 15, according to a handwritten notation on the copy. The report is dated March 4, 2026, two months after the boy’s initial admission. It is signed by Dr. Collins Bowah, a specialist and general surgeon, and approved by Dr. Ian Wachekwa, JFK’s deputy chief medical officer. Its central finding concerns an examination under anesthesia, which “showed that there was no evidence of anal trauma, the perianal region was dry and clean, normal anal sphincter tone, the rectal mucosa was intact, no tear observed, no blood or stool seen on the examining finger.”
The Liberian Investigator (TLI) compared that report with the boy’s JFK nursing notes, pharmacy medication sheets, discharge summary, inpatient bill and a psychosocial assessment from the hospital’s child protection unit. The records describe a boy who arrived in pain, spent weeks in the trauma unit, went home and returned still in pain. The report reduces that history to a single clean examination done about a month after the alleged assault.
The report describes the boy on arrival as “alert and conscious with all vital signs within normal limits,” and says the primary survey was “unremarkable.” Its examination section does not mention pain.
The nurses did. The first nursing entry is timed 12:22 a.m. on Jan. 4, hours after the boy was found by a roadside and brought to the hospital. It records his account that three adult men sodomized him over two days, and says he was alert and oriented with “pain in his anus.” Later that morning, a nurse found him lying “on his abdomen” and wrote that he was “unable to sit.” On Jan. 5, a nurse recorded that “upon arrival, the pt [ patient] complained of generalized pain.” The next morning, the “male trauma patient” was stable, and his “pain level had reduced after the administration of penta 30mg IV.”
Penta refers to pentazocine, an opioid painkiller. JFK pharmacy medication sheets record it being dispensed to the boy repeatedly in early January. The report’s account of his treatment lists only “analgesics, antibiotics, stool softener and vitamins.”
The report also makes no mention of post-exposure prophylaxis, the drugs given to prevent HIV infection after possible exposure. On Jan. 4, a nurse wrote, “PEP was not served, please make follow-up.” On Jan. 6, a nurse recorded receiving the medication “from my boss, one of the surveillance,” to be given “one tab every day.” On Jan. 14, a nurse recorded that the boy’s “prophylactic meds were taken.”
The report gives a reason for the examination under anesthesia: “After three weeks of admission, the patient complained of passing bloody stool and at times watery stool per rectum. Which necessitated the examination under anesthesia.”
None of the nursing entries reviewed by TLI record bloody stool. On Jan. 22, a nurse wrote, “No bleeding reported or seen.” On Feb. 6, a nurse wrote that “no fluid nor blood” was observed from the anus, and that the boy had “passed stool today with pain.”
That Feb. 6 entry says the boy was admitted to the fourth floor, “where he remained until his discharge on Feb. 10, 2026.” A JFK discharge summary bearing Bowah’s name records an earlier admission on Jan. 4 and a discharge on Jan. 22, with the diagnosis “Alleged Sodomization.” Nursing notes show the boy stayed on after Jan. 22 because he had an unpaid bill. He was back on the ward on Feb. 5, when a nurse recorded at 8 p.m. a “complaint given of pain from the anus.” A hospital bill dated Feb. 10 charges for 27 days in trauma and 10 days of admission.
That places the examination the defense relies on in early February. By then, about five weeks had passed since the boy says he was last assaulted, on Jan. 1. The report does not give the examination’s date.
The JFK report Peter Bon Jallah’s lawyers filed to show a 16-year-old boy suffered no anal trauma leaves out what the hospital’s nurses recorded: he arrived in pain, could not sit, and was given opioids and HIV-prevention drugs. A nurse has also testified to lacerations and bruises.
The report’s own account of an earlier rectal examination records an injury. “There were no visible anal abrasions, no visible bleeders seen. There were also no lacerations but a small abrasion at the six o’clock position,” it says.
When Jallah was first charged, the police charge sheet cited a medical report from JFK’s One Stop Center, the hospital unit for sexual violence survivors. That report described bruising around the boy’s sphincter muscles and a foul-smelling discharge from his anus. At trial, a nurse called by the prosecution testified to “lacerations and bruises observed in the alleged victim’s anus,”. The defense did not dispute what she saw. It argued that she “did not conclusively state that the injuries were caused by rape.”
The report Jallah’s lawyers filed does not mention the One Stop Center or its findings.
It does offer an alternative explanation, which the defense is expected to press. It lists “Chronic Constipation” as a diagnosis and says the boy “complained of not been able to pass stool since prior to his admission and been that way for over six weeks.” The January nursing notes reviewed by TLI record no constipation complaint. Lactulose syrup and suppositories appear in the February entries.
JFK’s Social Services Department Trauma and Child Protection Unit also assessed the boy. Its form marks the abuse as repeated, and records fear, anger, shame, guilt, intrusive memories and isolation. On the question “Pain/injury related to the incident?” it is marked yes. The social worker recommended continued psychosocial support, family counseling, medical follow-up and a child protection referral. The report filed in court does not mention the assessment either.
The nursing notes also record that on Jan. 8, the day after Jallah’s arrest, police escorted the boy out of the hospital with his mother and three others “to show the house where the incident took place.”
A Rwanda Forensic Institute report dated Jan. 22 found that Jallah “could not be excluded” as the contributor of male DNA found on four items of clothing, including the boy’s boxer shorts. The defense argued that the DNA examination “could not establish penetration.” On Sept. 30, Wesseh denied Jallah’s motion for acquittal. He ruled that the state’s evidence, presented through 12 witnesses, was not “wholly insufficient,” and ordered Jallah to take the witness stand.
The boy testified in August that he was assaulted three times: on Nov. 29 and Dec. 24, 2025, at Jallah’s residence, and on Jan. 1, 2026, at a building on Camp Johnson Road. He said he was then driven toward 15th Street and left by the roadside, where a security officer found him, FrontPageAfrica reported.
Medical research cautions against reading a late, normal examination as proof that nothing happened. A study of 2,384 children referred for possible sexual abuse, published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect in 2002, found that 96.3% had normal examinations. Among children whose histories involved anal or vaginal penetration, only 5.5% had abnormal findings, and among boys only 1%. “The history from the child remains the most important part of any assessment,” the authors wrote.
Britain’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, in guidance on the physical signs of child sexual abuse, says that a “normal examination does not exclude previous injury as many genital injuries heal without physical signs.” It also notes that anesthetic agents “commonly cause reductions in anal tone.”
Under Liberia’s amended rape law, rape includes penetration of the anus. It is a first-degree felony punishable by up to life imprisonment when the victim is under 18. A separate amendment makes gang rape a first-degree felony. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection reported 1,735 rape cases nationwide from January to September 2025.
The Liberian Investigator is not naming the boy or his relatives because he is a minor and the alleged victim of a sexual offense.
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