- The court heard that Mabaya threatened the child with death if she dared to scream.
- He grabbed her neck and carried her to his bed where he committed the offence.
Image: CLAUSE MASIKA
A Kibera court has sentenced a guard convicted of defiling a six-year-old girl to 33 years in jail.
Wyclife Mugonyi Mabaya was sentenced on Thursday by senior principal magistrate Esther Boke.
Prosecutor Nancy Kerubo asked the court for a harsh penalty for the man.
Kerubo during the trial called six witnesses before she closed her case. The accused was found with a case to answer and put on his defence.
According to the charge sheet, Mabaya committed the offence on November 4, 2018 at Kibera Makina area in Nairobi county.
He was charged with a second count of committing an indecent act with a minor.
Mabaya defiled QR after he grabbed her from a playing field and took her to his bed. He threatened to kill her if she dared to cry.
The minor told the court during the trial that she was playing in a field in Kibera with other children when Mabaya called her and told her he wanted to send her. When she refused, the accused resorted to using force, the court heard.
The court heard that Mabaya threatened the child with death if she dared to scream. He grabbed her neck and carried her to his bed where he committed the offence.
Lela Sabit, a witness who testified in the case, told the court that the girl informed her that the accused person raped her.
Sabit told the court the minor told her the sad news while she was washing utensils in her house.
“I was in my house washing utensils when the girl called me by my name and told me that the accused person had raped her. I then called other people and informed them of the same,” she told the court.
She told the court that Mabaya was arrested after the girl directed members of the public to his house where he refused to open the door.
“The girl directed us to where the accused person’s house was. We decided to knock on the door and he refused to open but we managed to open it with the help of other boys,” the court heard.
Sabit told the court that she checked the girl’s dress and noted that she had a lot of blood at the back.
“The dress had a lot of blood when we checked her. She was seriously bleeding from her private parts,” she told the court.
Mabaya was arrested by the police with the help of members of the public and was later arraigned.
A doctor from a city hospital testified that the girl bled profusely and that his examination showed she had been defiled.
In his defence, the accused person insisted that he never defiled the girl.
He told the court that he was a guard and that fateful day he had just finished washing his clothes and entered his house when he heard people shouting outside urging him to open the door.
“I refused to do so because I feared for my life. They were saying that I had raped a girl, which was false,” he said.
In delivering the sentence, Boke said that from the evidence provided in court, it was evident that the accused person committed the offence.
He also noted that the accused person was not remorseful in his mitigation and said that the child suffered during the ordeal.
Boke ruled that the accused person had been in prison for three years and handed him 33 years in jail instead of 36.
Edited by Henry Makori