Men behaving badly: city courts jam-packed with defilement suspects

More and more defilement suspects are being taken to court, raising concerns about the safety of Kenyan children.

Although punitive legislation has been enacted, particularly in the Sexual Offences Act of 2006, and heavy penalties imposed on paedophiles, defilement has persisted and the laws appear to have failed and succeeded in equal measures to curb the crimes.

Almost every passing day, a defilement suspect is charged in court and harsh penalties handed out to offenders every week.

Florence Machio, the regional technical advisor at Population Action International, said the main focus today should be on preventing defilements besides jailing paedophiles because the victims hardly recover from the effects of the violations even when perpetrators are served severe punishments.

She warned that only a small fraction of defilement cases are reported and even fewer successfully prosecuted as most children choose silence, which she says is caused by society’s failure to recognise that children need to be listened to.

Children remain less empowered to see signs of potential violations or report assaults when they occur, because there are no safe spaces where they can report attacks either at home or in neighbourhoods, at school or on their way to or from school.

“Most of the defilements could be prevented if children could report potential violations,” Machio said.

“I like what Makueni County has done. They have set up safe places where children can report sexual harassment and potential sexual violations whether they are happening at home or in school or holidays.”

In one defilement case successfully prosecuted recently, Wycliffe Mugonyi Mabaya was jailed for 36 years by a Kibera court on July 8 after being convicted of defilement.

The sentence includes the three years he spent in remand during his trial.

Mabaya had been found guilty of defiling a six-year-old girl in Makina, Kibera, Nairobi, on November 4, 2018.

He had called the child to his house to send her but she refused. A few minutes later, he followed her to the gate where she was playing with her peers. He grabbed and threatened to kill her if she raised an alarm, dragged her to his house, defiled her and sent her away.

Senior Principal Magistrate Esther Bhoke handed Mabaya decades behind bars, noting that despite the evidence that he committed the offence, the convict was not remorseful.

Prosecutor Nancy Kerubo had called six witnesses to prove her case and sought a maximum sentence for the convict.

In another case, Geoffrey Murunga was on Friday, July 23, handed a 25-year jail term by Kibera Senior Resident Magistrate Charles Mwaniki after he was found guilty of defiling a two-year-old girl in Kawangware.

Murunga committed the offence on February 2, 2017.

Work at night

Despite these severe penalties, more suspects are committing the offence and are being arraigned.

For instance, as Bhoke was passing the sentence on Mabaya, a young man was appearing in a different courtroom to answer to charges of defiling his wife’s 17-year-old relative.

The man was charged with defiling the victim at his home in Kibera between June 14 and 22 this year.

He allegedly committed the offence each time he was left alone in the house with the teenager after his wife went to work at night.

The following day, another man, a carpenter, was arraigned in the same court, facing incest charges after he allegedly defiled his eight-year-old daughter in his house in Kangemi, Nairobi.

The man pleaded guilty to the charges before Principal Magistrate Sharon Maroro and requested an opportunity to settle the matter out of the court, claiming it was a domestic issue.

But Maroro warned him that the offence was serious and has no option of alternative dispute resolution, advising him to rethink his plea to the charges. He denied the charges the following day.

In the same week, Kenya Medical Training College Karen campus student Robinson Siego was charged with defiling a 15-year-old girl in Kangemi.

Siego, 21, is said to have grabbed his neighbour’s daughter and taken her to his house, where he defiled her.

The victim’s father arrived at the house to rescue her, but Siego reportedly declined to open the door, prompting the father to call a Nyumba Kumi official, who gathered youths to break into the house and rescue the victim.

Three other suspects were arraigned in Kibera on July 2, charged with defilement, attempted defilement and performing indecent acts on children.

They include 53-year-old mechanic Michael Okumu, who was charged with attempted defilement and indecent acts on a minor after he sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl.

Okumu is accused of committing the offence in his house in Silanga in Kibera in Nairobi on July 3.

Okumu and the child’s parents are neighbours and she had walked into his house.

The other suspects are Kelvin Cheroben and Osman Sudi.

Punched and slapped her

Cheroben is accused of forcefully grabbing a 17-year-old girl he had been unsuccessfully seducing, wrestling her to the ground and attempting to undress her, swearing that he had waited too long to have his way with her.

On the fateful day, prosecutors said, he had met her on her way from a shop in their neighbourhood in Kianda, Kibera.

The teenager was rescued by Cheroben’s friend, who intervened and restrained him. He is also accused of assaulting her after he punched and slapped her during the tussle as she resisted.
Sudi, for his part, was found indecently touching an eight-year-old girl at a stall in Dagoretti, Nairobi, prosecutors said.

He had bought a Sh20 meatball from the minor’s mother, shared it with her before luring her to a stall, where he was found indecently touching her.

He is charged with committing an indecent act on the child.

Actual defilement, attempted defilement and indecent acts on minors are the most common offences paedophiles face in courts.

The disturbing fact is that most children are sexually molested at homes, their neighbourhoods, schools, churches and on their way to or from schools or churches, and by people close to them, in a breach of the trust the children have in the perpetrators.

For instance, Okumu’s alleged victim could have stepped into his house without fear because he was her neighbour and was familiar to her, while Cheroben had made numerous advances at his victim that she turned down before the alleged attempt to violently defile her.

Machio says most defilements can be prevented if children had safe spaces where they could report signs of sexual harassment and potential attacks in and out of school.

Most children do not know what to do with sex predators after sexual harassments or even defilements, including reporting them, because they are not equipped to overcome the fear of consequences and report defilement.

Most also have no idea who to report to and have nowhere to run and therefore only a paltry number of defilement incidents are reported.

Most report to teachers or parents who pester them after noticing signs of physical pain or changes in character.

Machio said there is a need for a policy that enables the catching of perpetrators of child molestation before they commit offences and punishing them to prevent actual defilement.

“We need to punish sexual harassment more to prevent the actual defilement. But if you go to a police station to report sexual harassment, even catcalling, the police will demand evidence of (it) and this has discouraged many women from reporting sexual harassment,” Machio said.