MANDERA, Kenya, Jan 21- A Senior Resident Magistrate at Mandera Law Courts has found Abdihakim Ali Hussein alias Master guilty of defiling a fifteen-year-old girl.
In his judgment delivered on Wednesday, Mr. Peter Wasike, the Senior Resident Magistrate concluded that there is sufficient evidence that the accused defiled the minor.
“The main charge is proved beyond reasonable doubt and the accused is found guilty and convicted. I make no finding on the alternative charge,” Mr. Wasike said.
Hussein will be sentenced on January 25.
He had been charged that on August 21 last year at Bulla Shantoley in Mandera North Sub County he defiled a girl aged fifteen years and identified as MM in the court proceedings.
MM told the court that she met the accused on the fateful day as she walked back home at about 6 pm who asked her to ride on his motorcycle.
Together they rode to the accused’s house and he asked her to enter his house.
While in the house, she said the accused pulled down her clothes and forced her on a mat, and defiled her.
The minor said she screamed in the process but the loud music from a neighbouring house where there was a wedding complicated the matter.
She said the accused carried her back after the ordeal to his motorcycle and dropped her near her home at about 8 pm.
She said she informed her uncle of the ordeal and together with her mother, she was taken to Rhamu Police Station for a formal complaint.
A medical officer from Rhamu Sub County Hospital told the court during the hearing that the minor complained of abdominal and back pain and that she was bleeding from her private part.
In his defense, the accused said he was being fixed by the complainant’s family after he declined to assist them.
He said he is a teacher and that the minor’s mother had asked him to train some of her children but he declined, leading to bad blood between him and the woman.
It was the court’s finding that the accused was known to the minor and this made her board the motorcycle before being defiled.
“In this matter, the minor was convinced and even boarded the motorcycle without resistance which is a pointer that they were familiar to one another,” Mr. Wasike said.
According to the trial magistrate, the accused defense was a distortion of the truth and it was inconstant and irrelevant to the issue at hand.
“I however note that the lack of resistance or giving of consent by the minor in a defilement charge is not a defense and is immaterial in circumstances of this case,” he said.
The Magistrate added, “A minor is not capable of giving consent legally. There was no claim by the accused that the minor misled him to believe that she was an adult.”
By claiming he was a teacher, the magistrate wondered why the accused failed to exercise reasonable caution to ensure the girl was an adult before engaging in sex with her.
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