The UK-based Childlight Global Child Safety Institute has welcomed a Kilifi court ruling that sentenced a 24-year-old paedophile to life imprisonment after finding him culpable of ten counts of child abuse and trafficking. Patrick Mbauni Muriithi was known as ‘Coach’ and ‘Daddy Youth football coach.
Patrick Mbauni Muriithi is guilty of sexually abusing two eleven-year-old male children and producing videos and images of the same using his mobile phone, offences he perpetrated on diverse dates between August 1, 2022, and January 1, 2023. Muriithi was also blamed for recruiting, receiving and holding the minors to exploit them sexually. He perpetrated the offences at Mwembe Tayari in the Kisumu Ndogo vicinity of Malindi town, Kilifi County and Nyeri County.
On the analysis of abuses and executing indecent acts on the minors, the magistrate convicted Muriithi to life imprisonment, the minimum sentence specified by the Sexual Offences. In an operation by Kenyan authorities, Muriithi was apprehended.
The court heard that the criminal used to coach a football team of under 15 and that he operated to recruit minors who were boys and present them and some of their family members with educational and financial backing. The court heard that the charged person used to live with some of the minors and that he utilised to sexually molest them and record the defilements using his mobile phone.
The prosecution summoned 15 witnesses, who included the two minors, their parents and friends, forensic professionals and police officers from the DCI and the Anti-Trafficking in Persons unit as well as counsellors among others. The two minors, who were recognised by initials, narrated how the criminal recruited them to a football club and later asked their parents to live with him, and that is when he started manipulating them.
