After nearly seven years of legal struggle, public shame and prison walls, Rose Diana Kaikai is finally a free woman.
A mother of two and a former house help in Nairobi, Kaikai’s name was dragged through courtrooms and police stations following accusations that she had sexually assaulted an eight-year-old boy under her care.
On June 12, 2025, the High Court sitting at Makadara brought her ordeal to a close.
Justice James Wakiaga set aside both her conviction and five-year sentence, declaring that the case against her was full of contradictions, investigative gaps and assumptions that should never have ended in a jail term.
Kaikai had been working in Kayole as a live-in domestic worker when her life turned upside down.
Hired to help run the household, cook, clean and care for children, she found herself accused of a crime she insists she did not commit.
“The mother used to bring men to the house,” Kaikai testified during her defence, adding that she could not account for what may have happened between the boy and his older sibling, with whom he shared a bed.
In 2018, police arrested Kaikai and charged her with defilement.
According to the prosecution, she allegedly rubbed the boy’s private parts against hers and had repeated sexual contact with the child between April and May of 2018.
She denied the charges, but the court convicted her on the alternative offence of committing an indecent act with a child and sentenced her to five years in prison.
The case revolved heavily around the testimony of the boy, referred to in court records as SM.
He told the trial court that Kaikai called him into her bedroom and instructed him to remove his clothes so she could bathe him.
He said that she then rubbed his private parts against hers.
He claimed the act became a daily occurrence starting May 1, 2018, and that Kaikai would send his brothers out to play football before summoning him.
Eventually, he confided in his schoolteacher.
SM also testified that he suffered anal injuries, which he attributed to penetration.
His mother said she had initially been told by Kaikai that the boy was unwell.
When his health worsened and he was unable to urinate, he was taken to the hospital.
After several treatments failed, a teacher informed her that the boy had disclosed Kaikai’s alleged abuse.
But under cross-examination, the mother admitted that Kaikai had been the first to report the boy’s illness.
She also confessed to owing Kaikai unpaid salary- money she said she later sent to Kaikai’s mother via mobile money.
Her eldest son had also been in the house during the time the abuse was alleged to have happened, but mysteriously left for their rural home shortly after the incident and only returned after Kaikai’s arrest.
Two medical professionals gave conflicting accounts of the boy’s condition.
The doctor who examined SM on June 12, 2018, almost three weeks after the alleged abuse, found no injuries in either the anal or genital areas.
But another medical expert observed a slightly swollen scrotum and a loose anal sphincter tone.
She concluded there had likely been an attempted sexual act, but also pointed out that at the boy’s age, he could not sustain an erection.
Police Constable Joy Miriti said the boy told her Kaikai touched him inappropriately during baths and would insert his private parts into hers at bedtime.
However, she later admitted that there was no direct evidence tying Kaikai to the infection the boy suffered.
Importantly, the possibility of sodomy, despite the boy’s anal injuries, was never investigated.
In her own testimony, Kaikai remained calm but firm.
She said that when the child became unwell, it was she who took him to hospital.
“Upon our return, I was arrested for allegedly infecting the boy,” she told the court.
She said she requested to be tested for any infections and that the results came back negative.
Kaikai believed her arrest stemmed not from evidence, but from tension over unpaid salary.
She alleged that the mother, perhaps feeling embarrassed or defensive, turned the finger of blame onto her.
The child, she said, shared a bed with an older brother and lived in a house visited by various male guests.
“I don’t know what happened between them,” she said in court.
Justice Wakiaga found that Kaikai’s version of events had not been given proper attention.
“The appellant’s defence was dismissed on the standard claim of being a mere denial, which was in error,” he said.
He pointed out that both the mother and the child had acknowledged a dispute, and the evidence of anal injuries raised the possibility of another perpetrator, one never investigated.
“The issue of the injury to the complainant’s anus was never pursued by the prosecution and eliminated, thereby raising doubt on the prosecution case,” the judge ruled.
He further questioned why Kaikai was convicted based on acts that could be explained as part of her caregiving duties, especially without conclusive medical or forensic evidence.
“If the evidence of the prosecution to the effect that she had an indecent act with the boy were believable, then failure to produce the medical report confirming that the appellant had no Sexually Transmitted Diseases logically leads to an adverse inference—the benefit of which should have been accorded to the appellant,” the judge said.
Justice Wakiaga acknowledged the contradiction and inconsistencies in the prosecution, noting Kaikai’s conviction was not safe and therefore set it aside.
“In the final analysis, I allow the appeal herein, set aside the conviction and quash the sentence thereon. The appellant shall be set free forthwith unless otherwise lawfully held and it is ordered,” the judge ruled.
