Belgian defiler dies six months into his jail term

Mombasa, Kenya: A Belgian convicted of defiling a Class Two girl over two years ago has mysteriously died, six months into his 20-year sentence.

He rose to infamy after he was arrested and convicted for repeatedly defiling an 11-year-old girl. 

The case got more publicity after it emerged that the girl’s mother sold her into sex slavery and spent the money with her lover.

Perniaux Robert, 62, died at the Coast General Hospital on May 15, a day to the start of an appeal he had launched challenging the lengthy jail term slapped by a Mombasa court on December 11, last year.

Dejected and abandoned in his cell at Shimo la Tewa Prison, he reportedly tried to plead with the Belgian Embassy in Nairobi to transfer him to a private hospital or plead with Kenyan authorities for early release or be freed on bond.

Stefan Aboge, the French interpreter who met him at the prison a day before he died, said the Belgian did not want to be admitted to the prison hospital. Apparently the embassy ignored him because he was a convict.

He was buried at the Mbaraki Cemetery in Mombasa, away from his Kenyan wife, who lives in Belgium.