A house help who introduced a 13-year-old boy to family life at a tender age has been sentenced to serve eight years in prison without the option of a fine.
The 34-year-old woman, a mother of five, was handed the penalty by Milimani Senior Principal Magistrate Esther Kimilu, who noted that “the minor is now addicted to pleasure life”.
The magistrate convicted her on two counts of sexually abusing the boy and introducing him to porn.
The court heard that she abused the boy between July 2020 and February 2021 at the height of Covid-19, when the government imposed restrictions on movement.
“The effect of the action by the adult woman has psychologically affected the minor, who now cannot live without satisfying his thirst for companion with the opposite sex,” the magistrate noted.
Ms Kimilu said she had considered that the woman is a single mother.
“I have considered the mitigation of the accused that she is a single mother struggling to feed her children,” Ms Kimilu noted.
She added: “The victim has never recovered from the incident according to the pre-sentencing report.”
She also noted that the woman was married at a tender age of 14, according to the probation report filed in court, and that she is also a victim of abuse.
“Owing to the issues stated, I hereby exercise my discretion to sentence the accused person to serve eight years’ imprisonment. The … sentence shall be served partly in custody and partly non-custodial ” the magistrate ruled.
The accused, identified as VNW in court papers, was charged in in February 2021 with defiling the boy for eight months and exposing the adolescent to pornographic content.
It was alleged that she had committed the offence in Mwiki, Kasarani, Nairobi County.
She was also charged with performing an indecent act with a child.
Court documents show that the abuse was discovered by chance by the boy’s parents in February 2021.
The boy’s sister had complained that she had lost her phone in the house. The boy and her other sister denied taking the phone.
The parents intervened by beating up the boy. Unable to stomach the pain, he confessed that he had been using his sister’s phone to watch pornography after allegedly being introduced to it by the house help.
Alarmed, the parents rushed the boy to a clinic for a medical check-up and reported the matter to the police.
Police said the boy revealed the house help began abusing him by first showing him videos of people engaging in sexual acts.
This grooming, police said, continued until the house help started physically sexually abusing the boy.
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