A secondary school teacher will spend three years in jail for three vicious slaps that left a student with a ruptured eardrum.
Wycliffe Kingori Mwangi was found guilty of assaulting the Form Two student at Kaaga Girls High School on March 24, 2014.
Chief Magistrate Lucy Ambasi said at the conclusion of the case that she had no doubts that Mwangi assualted the then minor which necessitated her to undergo an operation to correct a partial hearing loss.
“I find the accused was the culprit that slapped the complainant thrice leading to secondary ear infection and subsequent partial hearing loss,” Ms Ambasi said.
The magistrate also criticised the school for failing to conduct investigations into the incident once it was reported and instead attempting to suspend the victim and 12 other in an apparent coverup. “I perceive a sense of cronyism and the teachers covering up for their counterpart,” Ms Ambasi concluded while dismissing the evidence of the accused and two other teachers including the then deputy principal.
Instead, she found the evidence tendered by the victim, a former schoolmate and several of her classmates as credible and consistent about the incident. The girl who was later transferred from the school after the traumatic incident had been accused by her former teacher of practising lesbianism, but the magistrate noted that she had not been previously indicted by the school of the same and was not given a chance to defend herself.
According to the evidence adduced in court, the teacher summoned her at night in an open school area allegedly about complains from other students that she had been peeping at these leaving the bathroom. It was the next day when the student was alarmed that the accusation had been spread to other students and went to complain at the staff room that she met the teacher who slapped her and took her to the principals office.
A day later, she developed an infection but when she sought permission to go to hospital, the teachers at first claimed she was feigning sickness before they purported to suspend her and 12 others for engaging in lesbianism. “The TSC circulars are precisely instructive of how to handle such complains and more so ban the use of corporal punishment,” Ms Ambasi said in her ruling on the case.
She also noted the evidence tendered by doctors at the Meru Level 5 Hospital and the the Nkubu Mission Hospital had proved the assault took place perforating the student’s eardrum and caused partial hearing loss.
This is not the first time that, Kenyan teachers have come to the limelight for dangerous corporal punishment. A class one pupil had to undergo surgery to restore his genitalia in May this year after three teachers beat him for making noise in class.
The boy’s genitals were smashed by teachers at Kamukunji Primary School who fled after police launched investigations into the incident.
Mary Wangeci, the mother of the boy, said she received a call from the headteacher informing her of the incident.
She later gathered from other pupils that her son was found playing in class by a Standard Three class teacher and was punished. “It was then that he was beaten up by three teachers in the staff room.
He started bleeding in his private parts when he returned to class. The rest of the children informed the school head,” she said. The boy was taken to Ngano dispensary for first aid before he was referred to Nyahururu County hospital. The mother reported the matter to Ngano Police Station.
A doctor at Nyahururu hospital revealed that besides severe trauma, the boy suffered a six-centimeter cut on his left scrotum.