JUSTICE for the 13 young women who were abducted and repeatedly sexually abused finally prevailed this morning when a judge sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Lusaka High Court Judge Charles Kafunda said considering the gravity of the physical and mental torture occasioned on the victims, especially two of the 13, he needed to pass a maximum sentence of the convicts.
In respect of the first woman and the sixth who were abducted and brutally sexually abused, Judge Kafunda sentenced James Bwalya, 23, and Mathews Sikaonga, 22, to life imprisonment for rape.
The first women to be abducted was at the time pregnant and was kidnapped together with her three year old child.
Judge Kafunda said facts reveal that she was physically assaulted after her abduction until she became unresponsive.
“Later on, she was raped by the convicts in the presence of her three-year-old daughter,” the judge said adding that
“This happened several times until the convicts decided to release FM’s daughter by dumping her near the police station and they continued to have forced and violent sexual intercourse with her”.
The court also heard that the other victim who was targeted like her pregnant colleague, was also kidnapped and hit with an iron bar and fractured her leg.
She was brutally beaten after she strongly resisted to be raped by the convicts.
But the convicts, despite breaking the victims leg, continued to have forcibly have sex with her against her will during her period of confinement between March and October 2022.
The Judge said continuous mass rape of the victims by the two youths obviously exposed them to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.
The judgement took consideration of reports presented by the victim’s psychotherapists during sentence hearing which revealed that the victims will suffer long term trauma which will affect their career prospects.
Reports from psychotherapists also shows that the victims will suffer long term trauma and that their education and career prospects will be affected negatively.
“During the abduction, the victims were subjected to physical abuse, poor nutrition, forced alcohol abuse and forced injection of family planning pills,” the judge said.
He said that the convicts needed to be punished for their atrocious acts calculated to gain sexual gratification.
“The courts must handout appropriate sentences in the manner the crime was committed.
The seriousness of the offences have been discussed. The manner the offenses were inflicted were extremely violent,” Judge Kafunda said.
On top of the life stench, Judge Kafunda also sentenced the convicts to sentences ranging between three years to 50 years, the run concurrently(side by side).
In their mitigation, the convicts apologized saying they thought what they were doing were just games and did not know the seriousness.
Their lawyer also told the court to be lenient since they are young and first offenders who pleaded guilty to abduction which is not prevalent.
But the mitigation was did not hold water as tje judge wondered how the convicts, who wanted to use age aa mitigation used sophisticated means to brutally abduct victims in a well calculated manner.
“I have considered that their case did not present justification for lenient sentence,” the judge said.
This is in a case Bwalya, 23, and Sikaonga, 22, pleaded guilty to 54 counts of abduction, rape, aggravated assault and robbery, abduction of a child and aggravated assault with intent to stea, causing grievous harm and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
(Mwebantu, Thursday, 29th June, 2023)
