A father has admitted to assaulting his two-year-old stepson for not taking an afternoon sleep.
The accused, Robert Mwanie, pled guilty to charges of cruelty to a child under section 127(1)(a) of the Children Act when he appeared before Mombasa Senior Principal Magistrate Vincent Adet.
The kid’s mother, a casual laborer, had left the youngster in the care of the suspect, according to the court.
Mwanie, who pled guilty to the allegations, told the court that he assaulted the kid after he failed to sleep in order to give him some quiet time.
“He kept on crying seeking my attention whenever I put him to bed, anger took control of me and I beat him to make him fall asleep,” he told the court.
The State informed the court, through counsel Hillary Ishaqao, that the accused individual had a practice of beating the kid whenever he was put in his care.
“On the claimed day he beat the youngster and confined him inside the house, neighbours who were drawn to the minor’s distress screams intervened and forced him to open the door before handing him over to police,” Ishaqao added.
The allegations alleged that on various times between June and December 2022, at an unknown time in the Bangladesh region of Jomvu sub-county within Mombasa county, the stepfather of a 2-year-old child deliberately injured the minor by striking him with a stick, causing bodily harm to the minor.
