Man jailed for 15 years for defiling, impregnating daughter
A man who defiled his 14-year-old step-daughter for eight months and impregnated her was sentenced to serve a 15-year jail term by a Makadara court.
Principal Magistrate Merissa Opondo backdated the sentence to September 2017 when the convict was remanded after absconding court during the trial.
He had been charged with defiling the minor on diverse dates between November 2013 and July 11, 2014, and was found guilty after evidence that he had sired a son with his daughter and prosecution tabled the minor’s birth certificate which indicated she was born in March 1999.
The victim went through the ordeal until July 11, 2014, when she went to school and informed her teacher who took her to the police.
She was then taken to a hospital and told not to inform anyone until her father was arrested. She was found pregnant.
The convict was also facing an alternative count of indecent act with her during the same period.
He denied the charges throughout his trial and blamed his wife for framing the charges after he married a second wife.
Ascertain the paternity of her child
But when the minor delivered, on March 2, 2015, the court ordered a DNA test to ascertain the paternity of her child.
The results indicated 99.9 percent of chances were that he had fathered his daughter’s son.
“The accused person abused his daughter and he broke her trust and it will require a lot of counselling to restore the trust and hope if any, on the accused person. The accused person is not in the least remorseful over his actions,” Opondo said.
“I have considered his mitigation and the fact that he is a first offender but I also consider he had absconded court.”
He started defiling the minor in November 2013 inside his bedroom at his rural home in Kisumu, then brought her to Nairobi where he continued the vice for eight months unnoticed.
The first incident happened after the victim was sent by her step-grandmother to take bathe water to her father inside his house.
When she walked in, she found he had wrapped a towel around his waist. He grabbed her and took her to his bedroom where he defiled her around 9pm.
She narrated to the court, during the trial of her father, how she tried to free herself unsuccessfully- her father heaped himself on her and she was helpless.
The victim continued pleading with him to stop but heard none of it. When he was done, he told her to return to her grandmother and not tell anyone.
That was the beginning of painful eight months as the next day, her father was returning to Nairobi and wouldn’t leave her behind. He brought her to the city where he was living in a single room.
He continued defiling her. She said she was in a private school and after every examinations week, the school would send them home for a day which her father used to defile her.
“There were times he would pretend he had left the room at night, shut the door in pretense then return to defile me,” she told the court.