I ran an orphanage and school in Kachok, Kisumu, where I presented myself as a wealthy pastor caring for vulnerable orphans. Between April and July 2016, I had sexual relations with three girls under my care—two aged 15 and one aged 14. I touched them inappropriately and forced them to sleep with me.
One girl, aged 15, contracted HIV from me, as confirmed by medical tests. The girls endured the abuse for some time before escaping and reporting to the police.
In the trial at Kisumu Chief Magistrate’s Court, four witnesses, including the victims, testified. Medical reports and doctors’ evidence supported their accounts. On 18 December 2018, Senior Resident Magistrate Pauline Mbulika convicted me on three counts of defilement under the Sexual Offences Act and one count of deliberate HIV transmission.
She sentenced me to 20 years for each defilement count and 15 years for the HIV transmission, to run consecutively, totaling 75 years. The magistrate emphasized the severity due to my position of trust as their caregiver and “bishop.”
I claimed in court that the girls fabricated the story after I stopped paying their school fees, that they were using my phone to chat with boyfriends, and that there was no proof I infected anyone with HIV.
However, the court found the victims’ consistent testimony and medical evidence proved the case beyond reasonable doubt.
This was not my first such case. In 2007, while running an orphanage in Rachuonyo, I was charged with defiling a 15-year-old girl in my care. I was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 20 years but served only about three years before the High Court quashed it on a technicality with the charge sheet. I was acquitted.
I appealed the 75-year sentence immediately. The High Court dismissed it in July 2020. As a layperson in custody without easy access to documents, I later sought more time from the Court of Appeal.
In October 2025, the Court granted me an extension: 14 days to file the notice of appeal and 30 days thereafter to serve the full record. The prosecution did not strongly oppose, noting the length of the sentence warranted review. As of now, that appeal remains pending, and I am still imprisoned at Kodiaga.
While many inmates deny their crimes, the court heard the girls I was meant to protect and examined the hard evidence. The law treated the betrayal of trust in an orphanage setting, by someone in religious authority, with particular seriousness.
These days, I reflect deeply on the harm I caused—the stolen childhoods, the health damage to one girl, the shattered trust, and the pain inflicted on the victims and their families. I read what I can to occupy my mind, but nothing erases the facts established in the Kisumu court.
Power over vulnerable children can lead to the worst abuses. Denials do not change proven evidence, and a heavy sentence like this leaves one to live with the consequences, day after day.
Defilement cases like mine can easily amount to life imprisonment. Subsequently, intentionally infecting someone with STD like HIV can also amount to 15 years in prison to life imprisonment.
My name is Joseph Agutu Obala, and I remain a prisoner at Kodiaga Prison in Kisumu.
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