A British Airways pilot of Ghanaian descent has been jailed for eight years and four months for raping a 12-year-old girl he met on Instagram.
30-year-old Kwame Yeboah, a UK national who has been a First Officer with British Airways since 2023, first made contact with the child in late 2025.
According to prosecutors, though the girl initially told him she was 17, it would have been “obvious” to Yeboah that she was far younger, as she spoke about school and sent him images of herself in school uniform.
Yeboah is said to have spent several months grooming the minor by calling her about twice a week, sending her intimate pictures of himself, and cultivating increasingly sexual conversations. This made her believe she was in a relationship with someone who genuinely cared about her.
“He groomed the victim into believing she was in a relationship with someone who cared about her. In reality, he was an adult man who abused his position and exploited her for his own sexual gratification,” Senior Crown Prosecutor Thomas Hanlon said.
In February, he travelled from Reading to the Wirral in Merseyside, where he met the girl in person, drove her around, and then took her to an isolated location where he assaulted her three times.
The child later told Merseyside Police she struggled to process what was happening and felt nervous and confused.
A friend of the victim told her mother about the assault after a few days, and the mother in turn, reported the matter to the police.
Yeboah was identified using details he had given the child. When arrested, he answered “no comment” to all questions.
He, however, pleaded guilty to three counts of rape of a girl under 13 and one count of sexual assault of a girl under 13 on April 22.
In addition to the prison sentence, he was given a 15-year restraining order.
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