An unlikely trend is creeping in the Kenyan Criminal Justice System, where a majority of people convicted with heinous acts are members of the clergy.
In a group of 10 prisoners, you could hardly miss one whose charges stemmed from a church, orphanage or children’s home.
The courts too, without mercy, are handing the “Men of God” a generous helping of jail terms.
Thursday, 23rd May 2019, a Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG) priest was sentenced to serve 25 years in jail for defiling a minor.
Moments after being charged with defiling the child in 2011, the priest- Charles Onchari- would be later freed on bond by a Kitale Court.
While out on bail, Onchari launched a fatal manhunt of the child he was accused of defiling. He got hold of the minor and killed her.
On Thursday, Onchari joined a host of many other wayward priests in Kenya who are cooling their feet in the country’s most-secured penitentiaries.
Priest Caressing 11-year-old in Locked Car
September last year, mother testified to a Kitale court on how he found a Catholic priest naked in his car caressing her daughter!
The accused, Fr Bernard Magina Masinde of Kipsaina Parish was found locked in the car with an 11-year-old whom he was accused of defiling.
The girl’s mother had sent her to purchase kerosene for household use when the girl took extraordinarily long to come back home.
When it reached 7pm, the concerned mother walked to the market to check on her daughter. She would be directed by residents to a local parish where she found the naked priest caressing the genitals of her daughter while locked in the clergyman’s car.
“On closer scrutiny, I spotted the priest who was half naked and my daughter,” she told the court.
75 Years in Prison
But perhaps the most outrageous incident is when a Kisumu-based priest was sentenced to serve 75 years in prison for defiling two minors in the lakeside city.
December 2018, Joseph Agutu Obala was found guilty of defiling two minors aged 14 and 15 in 2016 and handed the near-century jail term.
Obala is said to have lured the minors to his orphanage with the promise of helping to finance their education.
However, he would trap the girls in his bedroom and assault them for three days straight after which they managed to break out and report to a nearby police station.
What’s more, Obala was also found to have transmitted HIV/AIDS to one of the minors he defiled.
Going by the medical report handed to Kisumu Senior Resident Magistrate Pauline Mbulika, the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that Obala actually transmitted HIV to one of the minors.
In the case where four witnesses testified against the priest, Obala protested the ruling saying there were insufficient grounds to convict him of the offence.
He also added that the minors had framed him after he refused to sponsor their education.
He was escorted to jail to serve his term nevertheless.
Pastor Murdered Girlfriend
Obala joins Pastor Paul Ng’ang’a Wanjiru of Wells of Faith Church in Kawangware who was convicted of killing his girlfriend in 2012.
The pastor was found to have impregnated Caroline Chinjira after she refused to terminate the pregnancy.
Reports indicated that the married pastor had nagged Caroline with the idea of aborting the foetus, a suggestion she flat-out rejected in its entirety.
The pastor would lure the lass and kill her in fear of soiling his reputation in the church and potentially falling out with his legally-married wife with whom they had children.
“The court has established that all evidence is pointing to the fact that the televangelist killed Chinjira after his clothes were found to have blood all over, as well as the roof and the steering wheel of his car at the scene of the accident,” Justice Lessit said.
Before Chinjira died, she told police that pastor Ng’ang’a and his son James Mutua had driven her to Southern bypass in Langata area when Mutua (seated in the back) started strangling her. She overpowered him and jumped out of the moving car.
She was to later be transferred to Kenyatta National Hospital where she died while undergoing treatment.