A 41-year-old Kenyan man, identified as Kennedy Okwako A. was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for having sexual intercourse with various women without using a condom despite knowing he was infected with HIV.
Kennedy, a Kenyan DJ and musician from Würzburg, was also a victim of the same. In 1998, Kennedy was infected by his German wife without his knowledge. Although he insists he wasn’t trying to revenge, he slept with eight women without informing any of them of his status. Three of his victims who appeared in court, a housewife, a hairdresser and the 13 year old, were all not infected.
Kennedy had been accussed of attempted severe bodily harm, attempted murder (manslaughter) and sexual assault of a minor. Fortunately, there was no evidence that he had forced himself on the minor and those charges were dropped. Kennedy had told the court that he had slept with the young lady, but he didn’t know she was a minor. He also accepted that he had slept with her only once without protection but even then, the young girl didn’t protest. Of the nine women he slept with, two had tested positive.
The prosecutor had tried to accuse him of vengence saying that Kennedy was infecting German women as payback to his German wife. The court ruled out this hypothesis as unfounded.
According to a psychiatrist from the Gesundheitsamt, Kennedy had basic knowledge on what HIV was and he always took his ARVs with no issues. Kennedy had been a regular patient at the Gesundheitsamt, where he received counselingand also signed adocument that agreed that he had understood that he shouldn’t have unprotected sex. In his defence Kennedy told the court that the doctors had told him the probability of any of his partners being infected was very low and he thought that meant it would never happen.
He was eventually charged with nine accounts of knowingly trying to infect his partners with HIV.
“I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I promise never to have unprotected sex ever again”, Kennedy told the court before the ruling. Well, he won’t worry about having any kind of sex behind bars though.
During the court processes, it was also discovered that he might have slept with more than the nine women who had appeared in court. This means that if the other women come out and press charges, Kennedy could spend very many years in prison.
In 2002, a lady had taken him to court pressing the same charges but the case didn’t go anywhere and Kennedy walked away without any punishment, not even a slap on the wrist. But not even the scare of a new process made him change his behavior. “He might have assumed he’s behaviour wasn’t that bad because he wasn’t punished for it”, the prosecutor told the court. In 2007, he was arrested yet again and this time, the court process continued to completion. In that year, six women testified against him in court and he was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment. In 2010, three other women took him to court and this time he got10 years. If women continue taking him to court, Kennedy might see his sentence increase every couple of years.
Kennedy was married to two German women and had three daughters with his many other ex-girlfriends.
Source-mkenyaujerumani.de
