Man freed after eight years over false rape charges
A man jailed for life for defiling his 15-year-old daughter eight years ago has been set free, after it emerged he was set up by his wife.
Machakos Judge George Odunga ruled that Julius Wambua be released from Kamiti Maximum Prison on a Sh. 30,000 cash bail pending fresh trial or appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
“The Proceedings, conviction, and sentence in Kithimani Principal Magistrate’s S.O.A Case No. 17 of 2011 and the subsequent decisions upholding the same are hereby quashed and/or set aside,’ he ruled.
During the ruling, the judge also urged couples not to use their children to settle scores.
Wambua was been convicted of defiling his daughter Dorcas Mwende, then aged 15.
It later emerged that Mwende had been coached by her mother to give false evidence to fix her husband with whom they had marital differences.
“Spouses and couples ought to remember that their children are not their properties. While they have legal parental obligations over them and in African set up the children have moral obligations to take care of their parents, parents have no right to treat their children as “scud missiles” or “patriots” against each other as a means of domestic warfare,” the Judge said.
Wambua’s plight captured media headlines when Citizen TV aired a story detailing her daughter’s confession in 2019. She claimed to have been coached by her mother to set up her father.
Consequently, Wambua, through his lawyer moved to the High Court in Machakos, and filed an application under a certificate of urgency. He petitioned court to overturn the judgment that had condemned him to life imprisonment.