Obiyo Nwigwe: Bendigo doctor jailed over child sex offences on teenage girl

A former Bendigo doctor told his teenage victim “if you were above 18 then you would be perfect” after he sexually abused her.

Former Bendigo doctor Obiyo Nwigwe confessed his child sex offending to his evangelical pastor, and later told his 13-year-old victim she was “amazing”, a court has heard.

Nwigwe, 44, faced the Ballarat County Court on Thursday where he buried his face in his hands when Judge David Sexton told him he would serve at least four years and three months in jail.

The Nigerian-born emergency department doctor has been behind bars since last week, after previously pleading guilty to three counts of sexual penetration of a child and one count of disseminating an indecent image to a child.

Bendigo Health emergency department at the general hospital on Barnard St, Bendigo. Picture: Zizi Averill

The doctor’s sickening crimes took place over 15 days in early 2020, when his wife was in England finishing her studies and when he was caring for the couple’s three children.

The court heard Nwigwe’s deeply religious wife has left him, but remains supportive of him.

The court heard Nwigwe confessed his child sex crimes to Pastor Michael Goyne from the Enjoy Church in Ballarat in the days before the victim and her parents went to Ballarat police.

He was also recorded in a police sting telling his victim that sex with her was “amazing”.

“If you were above 18 then you would be perfect,” he said.

Despite the police recording, Nwigwe told police in an interview the claims he repeatedly abused his victim were “all lies” and “part of an attempt to defame me”.

Obiyo Chigozie Nwigwe, leaving the Ballarat County Court after a previous hearing.

Judge Sexton said Nwigwe’s crimes had a devastating impact on virtually every aspect of his victim’s life, and had devastated the teenage girl’s family, who had presumed the doctor could be trusted around their daughter.

“(As a doctor) you must surely have known of the likely impact of your sexual offending on your … victim,” Judge Sexton said.

“You betrayed their trust spectacularly.”

A police search of Nwigwe’s phone uncovered more than 1000 text messages between him and the victim, including one Nwigwe sent of himself stark naked.

Nwigwe, a devout Christian, is a member of Nigeria’s royal family, and trained as a doctor in the United Kingdom before working in Sydney and regional Victoria.

He will be deported after he is released from jail, has been stripped of the right to practice medicine, and, as a child sex offender, will likely have to be protected within the prison system.

Nwigwe was sentenced to six years and six months with a four year and three month non-parole period