The High Court in Mukono on Monday sentenced a 15-year-old boy to three years in prison for defiling a 13-year-old girl.
Prosecution told court that on July 25, 2011, Musisi Musooba, 15, in Kizima village in Mukono district and another identified as Hamisi Matovu, 26, gang-defiled a 13-year-old girl who had gone to fetch water at a local well.
Prosecution submitted during the trial that Musooba and his friend Matovu pulled the victim to bush and defiled her in turns.
Prosecution also told court that as the girl was being defiled, she was in so much pain and tried to scream but was gagged by the accused who held her mouth shut until they accomplished the sexual act.
The victim informed her grandmother immediately who reported the case to police. Matovu was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to 16 years in jail last year.
Musooba went into hiding for about a year until he was also apprehended in 2012.
The trial judge Ms Margret Mutonyi expressed shock that a juvenile was detained for four years in an adult prison instead of a remand home for juvenile offenders. She observed that detention in the adult prison could have inflicted mental and physical torture on the accused.
Justice Mutonyi sentenced Musooba to four years in prison including the period he spent on remand, meaning he had already served out his sentence and would be released from prison after the judgment.
However the victim’s mother was unhappy with the judgment and yelled insults at the judge for what she called miscarriage of justice.
Source: Jessica Sabano, Daily Monitor
