Catholic Priest Gave A Minor Sh30 After Defiling Her, Court Told
The suspect Michael Mburu in court.
By William Muchiri
A seven-year-old girl narrated to a Nyeri court how a Catholic priest defiled her and offered Sh30 as a token.
The minor recounted how the priest, Michael Mburu lured her to secluded place, prepared a ‘bed’ using an empty sack, told her to lie on it and defiled her.
“I was in the school compound when an elder girl sent me to bring her a thorn from a nearby garden within the school when I saw brother Mburu, he told me that there was something he wanted to show me when I went near him he took a sack and spread it on the ground, he told me to lie by side he put his private part to my private part,” the minor told an attentive court in her sworn evidence.
Senior Principal Magistrate Faith Munyi heard that after the incident, the accused told her to go and not to tell anyone as he handed over Sh30 to her, which she said was in 20 and 10 coins.
The minor added that the accused person who in Catholic church serves as a priest in the rank of a ‘Brother’ told her “to buy a pencil and something else which I wish”.
The minor told the court that on her way to the shop, she met with a woman called Mama Freshia, who saw her straining while walking and asked her what was wrong.
She told her of what the accused had done and that she was feeling pain.
She added, “I was taken to the hospital at Endarasha and the doctor gave me medicine and later I was taken to the police station”.
Through her evidence-in-chief where she was led by Patrick Onjolo who is leading the prosecution, the girl disclosed that she had earlier before the incident seen the accused once in her school compound, adding that the day he defiled her was her second encounter with him.
Asked whether the person who defiled her was in the courtroom, she positively identified the accused by pointing him as sat in the suspects’ bench.
The 73-year-old priest is being accused of defiling and indecently assaulting the minor in May last year
at a school in Endarasha area, Kieni Constituency of Nyeri County.
The suspect’s lawyer Gitonga Muthee while cross-examining her sought to know how she identified her defiler and she repeated that she had earlier seen him in her school adding that the incident occurred moments after lunch break.
The lawyer further asked the minor what the accused did to her, which she replied, “he did bad manners to my private parts”.
After a spirited plea by the defence lawyer, the court released the accused on a bond of Sh500,000.
The case will continue on February 8.
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