Househelps who attacked boy, threw him to the dogs

Househelps attacks boy, and throws him to the dogs

By Standard Reporter

Nairobi, KENYA: It is one of Kenya’s most grisly crimes, a chilling warning to parents who employ strangers as house helps.

Two employees in a home in an affluent Nairobi neighbourhood inflicted gruesome injuries on a three-and-a-half year-old boy. Believing he was dead, they attempted to feed him to the family’s dogs to conceal their actions.

A judge recently dismissed the employees’ appeal against a 30-year sentence in a case that demonstrates risks parents expose their children to when they employ domestic workers without undertaking background security checks.

The judge’s decision on February 13 comes at a time when police have accused house helps and gardeners of colluding with criminals in robberies and kidnappings.

In the case, Concepta Achitsa Mwanje, 27, used a kitchen knife to expose the boy’s skull , according to court records. Mwanje was convicted alongside Vincent Odhiambo Owino for attempted murder. Owino was a gardener.

The two chopped the boy’s testicles and skinned his private parts. He also had cuts on the abdomen, thighs, right leg and buttocks, and his scalp was exposed.

Dr Joseph Kathuri, who examined the boy after the attack on December 31, 2008, said 75 per cent of the skin on the head was missing.

Last month, High Court judge Lydia Achode upheld Mwanje and Owino’s sentence, and concurred with the trial magistrate that the two attacked the child and fed him to the family’s dogs.

The Standard on Saturday cannot reveal the names of the child or his family to protect their identities and also for legal reasons.

All was well on the fateful day until around midday, when the boy’s father received a call that his son had been mauled by dogs. The child was rushed to hospital where doctors said he was unconscious and “near death”. After several operations, his life was saved.

By the time the father got home, Owino had fled, claiming he was scared after a heated exchange with the  boy’s uncle. However, he called his employer the following day to explain what had happened.

“…From the utterances of (name withheld) and my employer who used to beat me even when I had done nothing wrong, I felt my life was in danger,” he said.

Owino was later arrested and charged. The boy’s mother, however, said that while her husband was of a “harsh disposition” and would quarrel when unhappy, she had never seen him beat Owino.

Like many parents, the boy’s father said he had recruited Mwanje from one of the many domestic worker ‘bureaux’ now common in urban centres. It has emerged that many do not vet them and only obtain copies of their ID cards.

Investigations

Mwanje’s main task included cooking and caring for the family’s three children, while Owino cooked for the five dogs and tended the garden. Each had a monthly salary of Sh3,000 and would get a stipend of Sh100 every week.

Owino claimed he was not at home when the boy was attacked and went back to find dogs “surrounding something. I rushed to see what it was. I found a small child with very serious injuries…”

The boy’s father and detectives suspected all was not well when they found traces of blood in the dogs’ kennel. The child’s clothes were missing and were found days later in a neighbouring compound, wrapped together with the kitchen knife in a plastic bag.

Court records show the recovered items included a blue T-shirt with a yellow-whitish band on the shoulder, a kitchen knife, a red and black jumper whose collar was cut away on one side and human hair. Investigations led to the arrest and arraignment of the two in court.

But in what can only be described as a miracle, the boy recovered and was able to identify the housemaid (who he innocently referred to as auntie) as the one who had cut him on the head using a kitchen knife.

Even more horrifying is that the maid continued to work in the home, set on a quarter of an acre in the plush neighbourhood, two weeks after the attack. Amazingly, she continued taking care of the couple’s other two children before she was arrested.

The boy was the key witness in the High Court trial of the two. He told the court: “Auntie cut my head with people I do not know while Vincent was cooking for the dogs … Vincent was in front of the door cooking for the dogs … It is Vincent who took me behind the house where the dogs were … I was cut by auntie using a knife.”

He said the housemaid locked the front and back doors of the house. He managed to run out of the house after she cut him, which is when Owino took him to the dog house where they started licking and biting him.

He said: “Auntie locked the front and back of the house and the dogs started licking me while auntie was inside the house. When the dogs were biting me, no one helped me. Auntie did not help me, even Vincent did not help me.”

In her ruling, Justice Achode said the evil intentions of Mwanje and Owino manifested in Mwanje’s “acts of exposing the child’s skull and inflicting so many life-threatening wounds on him”, and by Vincent’s “act of taking him to the dogs in his bloodied state to entice them to maul him.”

The judge noted that Owino “literally tried to feed the little boy to the dogs.”  “The victim’s survival to tell his story was a miracle in view of the extensive injuries visited upon him,” Justice Achode said. The family incurred hospital bills of up to Sh2.8 million, which included flying in tissue experts from South Africa.