Life in jail for man who kicked out wife to sleep with daughter

The newly-constructed Kakamega Law Courts.[Mumo Munuve, Standard]

When the sentence to hang was read to him in the hot Monday afternoon at the Kakamega principal magistrate’s court, the 35-year-old man looked everything out of this world.

He gave a fearful glance at the magistrate, the court clerk then his mother who sat some five metres in the gallery before papers in his hand fell off as he dropped his weight on the dock’s bench.

A court orderly brought him back to senses with a pat on the back then showed him handcuffs-a signal that he gives away his hands-he complied and was whisked to court cells awaiting transport to prison where he may spend the rest of his life.

The court heard that in 2015, the young father chased away his wife for giving birth to two sets of twins. The man remained with the elder set of twins (boy and girl) born in 2007 and his wife walked out with the other set (boy and girl). As days passed, the man started defiling one of his girls MK until her brother exposed the abomination.

BROTHER'S REVELATION

“(The) twin brother precisely corroborated the defiled girl’s evidence. It is he who brought the goings on to the daylight when he questioned MK as to why she was crying during the night,” observes Principal Magistrate Joseph Ndururi in the judgment.

“What stood out is that MK was scared to tell anyone what was going on, and it was the twin brother who let the cat out of the bag by first reporting the matter to the accused person’s mother, who is his grandmother.”

When the report reached the grandmother of the twins, she failed to act. This prompted her grandson to escalate the matter to their head teacher who subsequently notified the twins’ mother then the police. The investigating officer Samuel Tisa executed an arrest on the father, questioned him about the incident and took the girl for medical tests to Dora Amakove of Kakamega referral hospital where it was ascertained that the minor was “repeatedly defiled by his father”.

“The accused had the habit of inviting the twins with another of his sons from a separate marriage to sleep in his house where he would let the boys sleep in the sitting room as he kept the girl in his bedroom where he defiled her repeatedly between April 1 and July 30, 2019,” Tisa testified. "The minor was then 12-years-old and her father 32."