Phalombe First Grade Magistrate Court has sentenced a 35-year-old Charles Wilson to spend the next 14 years behind bars for having sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 18 contrary to section 138 (1) of the penal code.
The court heard that Wilson abducted a 13-year-old girl for three days where he had sex with her almost six times a day, three in the morning and three in the evening hours. After searching for her, the victim was found by her brother on her way back home after released by the accused.
In her testimony, Estery Khwisa told the court that Wilson is her tenant and she saw him bringing the victim into her compound but when she asked him about the girl, accused lied that she is her daughter who stays in Thyolo. Khwisa told the court that the girl was sleeping in a separate house as the accused has a wife.
The victim said she met the accused at the market where he bought her thobwa and kalongonda. At night, she was then taken by the accused to a strange place which she could not recognise where she stayed for three days and that the accused slept with her daily.
The accused, in his defence testimony admitted that he lied to his landlord that the victim was her daughter and that he also told his wife that victim was her daughter from his second wife in Thyolo. He told the court that his wife is a witness.
In her testimony, the accused’s wife denied that she is not his witness. However, she told the court that with contradictory statements that his husband was saying about identity of the girl, she strongly believed that she was indeed sexually assaulted.
With the evidence presented including medical report and testimony from the investigator, First Grade Magistrate Leonard Fletcher Mtosa found the accused guilty and sentenced him to 14 years imprisonment with hard labour effective 11th October, 2023 the day he was arrested.
“I therefore sentence the accused person to the 14 years imprisonment…The objective is to punish the accused and also to deter other would-be offenders,” said the Magistrate in his sentence.
The case was heard on the open ground in full view of community members with support from World Vision Malawi.
