•A pastor was on Friday slammed with a life imprisonment by a Kilifi court after he was found guilty of incest.
•The minor told the court that her father grabbed her in the house and defiled her and warned against disclose it to the mother.
Image: FILE
A pastor was on Friday jailed for life by a Kilifi court for incest.
Kilifi senior principal magistrate Robinson Ondieki convicted the pastor for defiling his 16-year-old daughter between April 2014 and August 2015.
The pastor cannot be named to protect the identity of the minor.
The father of four maintained he was innocent and blamed his problem on his wife.
“My daughter was truant and whenever I disciplined her the mother would resist because she had intentions of marrying her off,” he said.
The minor told the court that her father grabbed her in the house and defiled her and warned against mentioning it to the mother.
“My mother had gone for chama meetings and my siblings had gone to check on how the charcoal we were burning was going on. My father asked me to give him drinking water then he grabbed my hand and defiled me. He threatened to kill me if I ever told my mother,” the girl said.
"He told me that he was providing everything I need, and I did not want to give him what he wanted."
The sexual abuse continued until September 2015 when she disclosed to abuse to her grandmother and uncles.
“She disappeared for days and I traced her at her grandmother’s home. The grandmother did not tell me that the girl was there for three days. Instead they alleged I had defiled her,” the pastor said.
All along, the mother, who operates a food kiosk, told the court she was unaware that her daughter was being sexually abused.
“My daughter had joined a day school. One evening, she did not come back home from school and this made me worried. Her grandmother later called me and told me that she was with her," the mother said.
She added: "Mother told me that my husband was sexually abusing our daughter and he had lied to her that I will commit suicide if she told me. She declined to come home with me and told me that the father had sex with her."
One of the pastor’s sons defended him and told the court that the parents had differences over business.
The magistrate said in his ruling: "The issue of the victim being misled by the mother and family business only arose at the defence stages which according to me is an afterthought. In this circumstance, I make my finding that the prosecution has proved its case beyond reasonable doubts in all counts and I convict the accused under section 215 of CPC."