Former British Airways pilot jailed after grooming and raping 12-year-old girl

Kwame Yeboah, 30, was sentenced to 9 years and 4 months in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of rape of a child under 13 and one count of sexual assault at Liverpool Crown Court on 24 June 2026.

A former British Airways First Officer has been jailed after grooming a 12-year-old girl on two online platforms and travelling hundreds of miles to rape her, Liverpool Crown Court has heard.

Former British Airways Pilot Kwame Yeboah, 30, of Drake Way, Reading, first made contact with the child online in late 2025. He initially encountered her on Omegle, a video chat platform that connects strangers at random, before moving their communications to Instagram, where explicit messages and images were exchanged. She initially told him she was 17, and their conversations began ordinarily. However, the nature of later messages and her appearance when they met in person would have made it clear to him that she was significantly younger and could not consent to any sexual activity with him.

Yeboah has been working for British Airways since 2023 as a First Officer, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Former British Airways pilot Kwame Yeboah after being jailed for child sexual offences. — Former British Airways first officer Kwame Yeboah was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court after admitting child sexual offences.

Grooming and Online Contact

Yeboah sent the child intimate images of himself, and the conversations became increasingly sexual. He called her around twice a week, making her believe she was important to him and that he cared about her. The court heard that despite the girl initially claiming to be 17, she sent him photographs of herself in her school uniform and referred to school tests, being grounded, and not being permitted to go out unsupervised. Sentencing, Judge Gary Woodhall said all of this was indicative of her true age. He noted the significant age disparity and the totality of evidence available to Yeboah as providing little mitigation. When she stated that she could not meet up with him after his requests, he replied with emotionally manipulative messages, telling her he could no longer call because it made him sad that he could not see her.

The Offences

In February 2026, Yeboah travelled from Reading to Merseyside to meet the child late in the evening. He drove her around before taking her to an isolated location, where he raped 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 told her mother what had happened. When arrested and interviewed, Yeboah answered “no comment” to all questions. He was charged with three counts of rape, based on the fact that a child under 13 does not have the legal capacity to consent to any form of sexual activity and one count of sexual assault. At Liverpool Crown Court on 22 April 2026, Yeboah pleaded guilty to all charges.

Sentencing

On 24 June 2026, he was sentenced to 9 years and 4 months imprisonment, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Some media outlets reported the sentence as 8 years and 4 months; this article reflects the CPS official figure as the primary authoritative source. He was also given a 15-year restraining order. He will be required to sign the sex offenders’ register for life. The judge told Yeboah there was clearly some grooming behaviour and that he had sought to manipulate and emotionally blackmail his victim in the context of meeting up for sexual acts.

Prosecution Statement

Senior Crown Prosecutor Thomas Hanlon, of CPS Mersey-Cheshire’s Rape and Serious Sexual Offences unit, said Yeboah would have known early in his contact with the child that she was not the age she initially claimed to be.

“She spoke about school and sent images of herself in school uniform. When he met her in person, it would have been obvious that she was a very young child.”

Hanlon added that Yeboah had groomed the victim into believing she was in a relationship with someone who cared about her, when in reality he was an adult man who abused his position and exploited her for his own sexual gratification.

Background

Yeboah also spent more than 17 years playing basketball and refereeing at Basketball England. His defence counsel told the court he was born in Ghana, retained strong links with the Ghanaian community in the UK, and was a dedicated member of a loving and supportive family. The defence noted that Yeboah had, throughout his time in custody, fully accepted that all that had happened was his fault and his alone.

Court impact statement

Impact on the Victim

The judge told Yeboah that the victim described how what happened with him had changed every part of her life. She had trouble sleeping and eating, was constantly on edge, and no longer felt comfortable in her own body. Her schooling had also been affected, with problems concentrating.