A houseboy serving life in prison for defiling his employer’s four-year-old girl in Elgeyo Marakwet has suffered a major blow after the Appeal Court upheld the sentence.
Titus Kirui was charged in 2013 with defiling the girl in his bedroom in the employer’s house. He was convicted and sentenced to death after the prosecution proved its case. Death sentence is mostly commuted to life imprisonment even though many convicts remain on death row.
Kirui’s first appeal at the High Court was dismissed, leading to the second appeal.
Appeal Court judges Agnes Murgor, Daniel Musinga and Wanjiru Karanja, in their judgment delivered on September 25, ruled that they found nothing on record to impeach Kirui’s conviction as upheld by the High Court. “We find no merit in the appeal against conviction and dismiss it accordingly.”
The court also noted Kirui’s mitigation being a first offender but judges, nonetheless, said the experience the girl was put through was horrendous and cannot be justified or tolerated under any circumstances.
“We find no reason to interfere with the sentence which is a lawful one. Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal in its entirety and confirm the life sentence meted out by the trial court and confirmed by the High Court,” the judges ruled.
It was the prosecution’s case that the girl went home on the material date and found Kirui, who was her father’s employee. She said Kirui called her to his room and caused her to lie on his bed after he removed her clothes and defiled her.
The girl’s father testified that he arrived home at the nick of time to find Kirui in the act. He asked him what he was doing, and Kirui started shaking and begged for forgiveness saying the devil had led him astray.
The matter was reported to the village elder and the appellant was later escorted to a police station. The child was escorted to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital where she was examined and found to have been defiled.
In his defence, Kirui admitted that he was well known to the child and his father as he used to be their employee. He also said the child was in his room at the material time but said she was changing from her school uniform into home clothes when her father found them.
His witness’s testimony was that they checked the child’s private parts and did not seen any injury.