An 18-year-old woman is crying for justice after a court handed a probation sentence to a man who defiled her when she was 14.
“There was no justice. It is hurting and disheartening to see him free and I am living in fear,” she said.
She could not talk about the matter, especially the court case, after Muinde Nashon, a boda boda rider who defiled and made her pregnant, was convicted and sentenced to three years of probation by a Makindu court.
She had earlier testified that she was grabbed from behind and wrestled to the ground by a man who turned out to be her neighbour.
“I struggled to free myself and resisted but he was heavy…he threatened to kill me if I reported the attack to anyone,” she said.
Police report
She found out she was pregnant two months later during a medical examination after she was defiled for the second time by Muinde’s brother.
After the second incident, she opened up to police about the earlier attack.
In the second incident, the man, whom we can’t name for legal reasons because he fled the scene and has therefore never been caught or convicted, was allegedly found in the act in the girl’s parents’ house.
She would later deliver a baby girl, who is now four years old.
DNA tests ascertained that Muinde was 99.99 percent the biological father of the child. Only Muinde was arraigned and convicted.
The two incidents were reported at the Misuuni police post.
In court, Muinde claimed that the defilement was a false claim arising from a land dispute between his and the girl’s families.
But he was convicted of defilement on March 30 this year and sentenced to three years’ probation by resident magistrate JD Karani.
“The accused denied the offence. He never tendered any other evidence in support, save for his denial. The only thing that the accused managed to prove was that the complainant was of questionable morals. I thus find that the defence was not sufficient to raise any doubts in this court’s mind,” Mr Karani stated in the judgment.
“Being of questionable morals does not in any way mean she was at the age capable of giving consent and further, does not in any way make one unable to seek justice when a wrong has been done to her. The state has sufficiently proved their case. In the upshot, therefore, the accused herein is convicted under section 215 of criminal procedure code.”
Muinde had been charged with defiling the minor on diverse dates between February 6 and May 6, 2017, in Emali, Nzaui sub-county, Makueni County.
She was only 14 and in Standard Six. The attacker was a neighbour known to her family because her father had bought land from the man’s parents.
Her father said that he told the probation officer that all he wanted was the law to take its course “because they called me to interview me in the presence of Muinde instead of interviewing us separately”.
He said Muinde had been tormenting him. “Each time I meet him in the company of his friends, he tells them to remember he has two wives, just to remind me that he made my daughter pregnant and considers her his wife,” he said in an interview at his home.
“When he comes to my homestead he calls my daughter’s child to ask her about her mother’s whereabouts or whether she is still in school, in mockery.”
He added: “They kept threatening me the entire time that this case was in court. They used to tell me the case won’t go anywhere, and I have seen it. At some point, they sold land and offered me Sh30,000 to stop pursuing the case and I turned it down.”
Makueni Deputy Governor Adelina Mwau also wants Muinde’s case reopened. The State can appeal to seek a revision of the sentence. BY DAILY NATION