Bodaboda operator convicted of defiling six-year-old girl

A boda boda rider accused of defiling a six-year-old Grade Two pupil is staring at spending time behind bars after the Eldoret Law Courts convicted him of the criminal offence.

Gideon Keter, 34, who was unrepresented, was convicted by Senior Resident Magistrate Kimani Mukabi on Tuesday after he was accused of defiling the minor code-named V.J. in a maize plantation.

The accused is said to have been entrusted by the victim’s parents to transport her to school and back home in the evening when he started abusing her.

According to the court documents, the accused is said to have committed the offence on diverse dates between September 1, 2021, and September 13, 2022, at Mereret village in Soy sub county, Uasin Gishu County.

When the accused appeared before the court during plea-taking, he denied the charge, prompting the prosecution to line up five key witnesses who testified against him.

One of the witnesses Dr Irene Simiyu from Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, told the court that she saw the complainant, aged six, at the hospital on September 6, 2022 when the parents brought her for medical examination.

The medic told the court that the girl had white discharge, swelling on the labia minora and multiple healing tears of the hymen.

“From what we have, the HIV and UDRL tests conducted on the complainant returned negative and the result shows the assailant sexually molested her on several occasions which is a serious offense,” said Dr Simiyu.

“Apart from the report we have, the upshot of the matter is that the prosecution had also proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused had defiled the complainant but this emerged after the examination result came out,” said the magistrate.

While convicting the accused, the magistrate said that his defense amounted to mere denial, unsupported by any credible evidence.

He further highlighted that it was undisputed that the accused and the complainant were well known to each other as they hailed from the same neighborhood.

Mukabi also said that it was uncontested during the proceedings that the accused used to pick and drop the complainant to and from school for a long period.

“I fail to understand what’s happening nowadays with our children, you can see the accused was a neighbor of the complainant’s family who had entrusted him to ferry the child to and from school daily. She recognised him as the person who took her to the maize plantation where he defiled her in turns, very unfortunate,” the Magistrate said.

Mukabi emphasized that based on the overall analysis of the evidence in the matter, he never found any motive of evidence to suggest that the accused had been framed and or wrongly implicated in this matter.