• She urged the court to ensure justice for her son whose life has been devastated by a person he called father and looked to for love, protection.
• Defence lawyer for imam says he is preaching in prison and deserves only two or three years as he has 'learnt his lesson'. Ruling on February 5.
Image: FREEIMAGES.COM
My cleric husband deserves to rot in Jail, he sodomized his stepson.
Those were the words on Thursday of a tearful mother, the widow of a Muslim cleric who was appealing his sentence of life imprisonment for sodomising his stepson in Malindi.
Mother speaks of trauma
Today the boy always scampers for safety when he sees adult men; he only plays with girls, not boys, as the assaults are still fresh in his mind.
The woman told Malindi High Court judge Justice Reuben Nyakundi that the imam betrayed their six-year marriage by sodomising her son. The child was nine years old at the time.
She asked the court to ensure justice prevailed for the son whose life had been devastated by a person he called father, to whom he looked for love and protection.
Today the boy always scampers for safety when he sees adult men; he only plays with girls, not boys, his mother said, because the sexual assaults are still fresh in his mind.
The woman was given an opportunity to make a statement before the judge makes a final judgment on February 5, Wednesday next week. the appeal case said currently the child always scampers for safety whenever he sees grown-up men.
''I want the court to deliver the harshest penalty, which will be a lesson to people like him," she said, adding that the harshest penalty would help shape her son's future.
In November 2018, Malindi senior principal magistrate Silvia Wewa sentenced the Imam to life imprisonment after she found him guilty of the sexual offences he committed in March 2016.
News of the offence sparked widespread protests in the neighbourhood in Malindi own. When the verdict was handed down, there were celebrations in the court by residents and Muslims for Human Rights, the human rights organisation that represented the family.
The NGO called the judgment a positive in the war against sexual gender-based violence.
Defence lawyer's plea
He appealed for a lenient sentence, saying the imam was preaching in prison..He said a sentence of two to three years would suffice as deterrence and punishment for the cleric 'who has learnt his lesson'.
Court documents revealed the imam sodomized his stepson three times and threatened him of dire consequences if he dared to expose his acts. Sometimes he gave the boy Sh10.
He denied the charges.
The court said the imam lacked remorse and betrayed the trust of his child who looked to him for love, care, shelter, food and education.
The court will deliver its judgment after the probation report and the victim's impact assessment report are presented.
In his final submission on Thursday, the imam through his advocate Martini asked for a lenient sentence because he was preaching in prison. He said it was unfortunate that his client faced such a situation.
He appealed for a reduced sentence of two to three years only, saying that would act as deterrence, retribution and punish the cleric "who has learnt his lesson".
(Edited by V. Graham)