A man who repeatedly defiled his teenage step-daughter and impregnated her will spend 25 years in prison.
The man (name withheld to protect the girl) committed the offences between November 2013 and July 2014 in Kayole, Nairobi.
The 14-year-old girl, who was the main witness, often broke down as she recalled what happened during the trial, forcing the court to adjourn.
“I had to have her counselled several times for her to eventually testify. When I accorded the accused the opportunity to cross-examine the complainant, I was shocked... The timid complainant boldly faced her attacker and expressed her disgust at his actions,” Makadara principal magistrate Merissa Opondo said before passing sentence a few days ago.
“I took this to mean liberation from the shame that had been bottled up. I finally understood why she had given up her child for adoption,” Opondo said.
Six people testified for the prosecution.
The girl recalled that her grandmother (the accused's mother) asked her to take bathing water to the defiler in their home in rural Kisumu. It was 9pm on November 2013. There was no electricity – the only light was from a kerosene lamp.
The accused had wrapped himself in a towel. He suddenly grabbed her, forced her into a dark bedroom and defiled her.
When he was done, he ordered her to return to the grandmother with a warning that she should not disclose what had transpired.
The following day, the step-father brought her to Nairobi and enrolled her in a private school. But he continued to defile.
“After exams, we would be given a day off. That was when my step-dad used to defile me. He would leave the door unlocked only to return at night and defile me,” the girl testified.
On July 11, 2014, she narrated her tribulations to one of the teachers. A medical test established that she was pregnant.
She and the teacher reported the matter to Kayole chief’s office and the accused was arrested.
The complainant gave birth on March 7, 2015, and a DNA test showed that the accused was the biological father of the baby.
The accused had, in sworn evidence, said that he had been financially unstable. His wife had left him, prompting him to marry another woman – the mother of the complainant.
The court dismissed his testimony as an afterthought and sentenced him accordingly.
