Women’s rights activists marched to the Supreme Court to present Chief Justice Martha Koome with a petition seeking women protection rights.
The petition asks the CJ to reconsider a judgement that eliminated mandatory sentence for sexual offenders.
The Sexual Offenses Act of 2006 mandates mandatory sentencing for offenders of sexual violence based on the kind of offense.
They claim that the verdict is illegal because it allows judges to impose penalties at their discretion.
Reading the petition at the Supreme Court, CREAW Strategic Litigation Lawyer Winfred Odali stated that countless incidences of sexual violence are recorded every day.
“A six-year-old girl was defiled, murdered and buried in a shallow grave, a 12-year-old girl fears reporting her father who defiles her every day,” she said.
“A young woman was raped by a boda boda operator and a single mother was gang raped by men from her neighbourhood while coming home from work.”
In Kenya in 2021, 9,484 children were defiled, equating to more than 25 children violated per day.
According to Odili,despite the inhumanity of these instances, the Mombasa and Machakos High Courts, as well as the Nyeri Court of Appeal, deemed obligatory sentence of criminals illegal.
