MERU, Kenya, May 10 – A 60-year-old man was jailed for 20 years by a Meru magistrate’s court on Monday, after he pleaded guilty to defiling a schoolgirl.
Peter Mbaabu Matiri shocked the court when he admitted to defiling the 12-year old schoolgirl at Gitimene market in Naari location of Imenti North district.
He also pleaded guilty to the second count of unlawfully and indecently touching the genitals of the form two student.
Chief Inspector Joseph Bahati, prosecuting, said Mr Matiri who is a casual worker at St Joseph Secondary School met the minor as she walked to school in the morning.
He said he gave her sweets and then took her to a rented house within the market where he defiled her.
The prosecutor said after defiling her, the accused then escorted the schoolgirl to a nearby shop and left her there before going to work at the secondary school.
It is then that a neighbour who had seen the accused arriving and locking himself with the girl in the house raised the alarm. She called a teacher from the girl’s school and sought an assistant chief who arrested the accused.
Mr Matiri admitted to committing the offences even after he was warned by Meru Principal Magistrate Kiarie Waweru Kiarie that the offence carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The magistrate then read the charges three times and the sex pest still pleaded guilty.
When asked to explain his actions, the accused declined and kept quiet waiting for the sentence to be passed.
It is then that Mr Kiarie sentenced the accused. The Magistrate said he had considered the accused was a first offender as the prosecutor had informed him.
He said he had convicted him on his own plea of guilt.
The magistrate however gave the accused 14 days to lodge an appeal.
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