Man who lured girls with mabuyu for defilement gets 46 years
A man in handcuffs.
The trial of a 37-year-old man for sexually assaulting two young girls in Mvita, Mombasa County, has revealed that children could be suffering in silence at the hands of sex pests who take advantage of their vulnerability.
The testimonies of the two minors, aged seven and nine, in this case should be a wake-up call for parents who do not take seriously the safety and general welfare of their children.
While on their way to school in the morning, Swaleh Mwinyi would waylay the two girls and drug them before defiling them.
Sometimes he would do this in the evening.
“He [would] defile me either very early in the morning when I am going to school or when returning from school,” one of the girls told the court during Mwinyi’s trial.
The girls said Mwinyi used to buy them chocolate, mabuyu or sweets and sometimes would give them money.
“He [would] give us an oval-shaped object to sniff. Whenever we sniffed the object, we would feel dizzy. He would then grab and take us to an alley and defile us in turns. He would then threaten to kill us if we screamed or told anyone,” they said.
The minors also told the court that whenever they sniffed the oval object, they would vomit and have headaches and chest pains.
“We did not tell anyone what had happened because he had threatened to kill us,” they said.
The minors’ parents testified that the victims did not disclose anything to them for the period the suspect was defiling them.
“We were in the sitting room when they returned from school. They left for the madrassa without saying anything,” a mother of one of the girls said.
But the parents eventually became suspicious, and days later their fears were confirmed when a Good Samaritan visited their home and asked how they are related to Mwinyi.
Court documents show that the person warned them to watch the children and the suspect. When the minors were asked if they had been defiled, they denied it because of death threats from Mwinyi.
The children were then taken to hospital and they confessed that the suspect used to take them to the bush after buying them sweets and mabuyu.
To their parents’ shock, the children disclosed that the sexual abuse started when they were in Grade One and that the suspect had threatened to kill them.
Medical records confirmed the minors had been defiled by the suspect. Mwinyi was then arrested and charged with two offences of defilement.
The charge sheet shows that the suspect defiled the two minors between April 13 and October 14, 2012, in Kaloleni, Mvita, Mombasa County.
Based on the evidence of six prosecution witnesses, Mwinyi was convicted on the two counts of defilement and sentenced to serve life imprisonment.
He was aggrieved by the sentence and filed an appeal in the High Court.
The appellant complained that the sentence was harsh and excessive and faulted the trial court for convicting him based on contradictory evidence that was marred by discrepancies.
“The trial magistrate erred in law and fact by convicting and sentencing me without considering that the case was poorly investigated which led to a miscarriage of justice. My defence was not considered,” he argued in his appeal documents.
He denied committing the offence but admitted that he knew the children and their parents because he had worked as a painter in their house.
He questioned how he could have defiled the minors when they were taken to and picked up from the bus stage.
“Since the area was full of drug users, it could not be ruled out that any other person committed the offence. The court did not consider the fact that the shopkeeper where I bought sweets or the Good Samaritan who informed the girls’ parents [about the alleged defilement] were not called as witnesses to corroborate evidence,” he said.
But High Court Judge Anne Ong’injo found that the charges against Mwinyi were sufficiently proven and that there was nothing unlawful about the sentence passed by the trial magistrate.
“However, considering that the current trend requires a sentence to be defined, I do revise the life sentence to 23 years’ imprisonment in each count to run concurrently,” said the judge.
The new sentence means Mwinyi will serve 23 years for each of the minors he defiled.
