In a worrying early man trend, a 20-year-old man has been arrested and charged in a Marimanti court in Tharaka-nithi County for marrying a 16-year-old Class eight girl.
Peter Murithi, who pleaded guilty to the offense before the court’s Principal Magistrate Peter Maina, was given a sh100,000 bond and will remain in remand until Monday next week when judgment will be made.
Murithi’s father, Samuel Gichugu Makembo, and the mother of the teenage girl who were also in on the marriage were also charged.
The two will also remain in remand until Monday awaiting judgment or pay a bond of Sh100,000 each.
The cases of teenage pregnancies in the country has become rampant after schools closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fifteen school-going girls as young as 13 years have been impregnated and some married off in Kisauni, Mombasa County since the Covid-19 pandemic started in March.
According to County Children Coordinator Philip Nzenge, his office has documented 15 cases of girls from the age of 13 to 17 falling pregnant and some married off. Reports have also revealed that some of the girls were impregnated by relatives.
The county office says this time teachers are not to blame for the pregnancies. “One case involves a Class, Four pupil. Families hard hit by the pandemic and with no source of income have been trading off their girls to some well-off people as wives,” Nzenge said during an interview with The Standard.
Yesterday, a list of impregnated school girls per county between January and May/June 2020 was released and the numbers were painful to see.
The Kenyan Government, parents, and the media are failing terribly in protecting the youth from these life-altering decisions. Little to no education, the glorification of sex and no measures taken against the perpetrators of statutory rape is a problem.
