The truth about child Heaven: The justice process and her mothers testimony

How was the case of Baby Haven judged?

(Scanned from official and unofficial data)

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. What did the charge say?

High Court of the Amhara National Regional Government of Bahardar and its surroundings; The West Gojam Zone Prosecutor has filed two criminal charges against Getnat Baih, who allegedly raped and raped 7-year-old Haven Awt on September 19, 2016, and strangled her to death to hide the crime.

The first charge is rape, in violation of Article 620(3) of the Penal Code, which provides that anyone who rapes a woman causing grievous physical or mental injury or death is punishable by life imprisonment.

The second is that in order to hide the crime of rape, the accused forced and raped Heaven, so that the crime would not be known, and strangulated her in a manner that indicated that it was cruel, shameful or dangerous. This charge is punishable by life imprisonment or death.

. What did the accused say?

The accused said he would contest the charges. The objection of the prosecution was that even though he was accused of committing serious murder to hide the crime of rape, since the rape was used to establish the crime of murder, he should be charged not with the two overlapping crimes, but only with one charge of murder.

The high court of the zone also rejected the objection that the defendant was charged with two overlapping crimes because he committed the rape and then the murder in two different sections of the law. Although the accused objected that the additional physical and documentary evidence presented by the prosecutor should not be attached, the court rejected the objection saying that they would help in the administration of justice.

According to the criminal procedure law, the defendant was read the charges and was made to understand the act he was accused of and was asked if he had committed the act. “I did not commit the deed, I am not guilty,” he replied.

Although the accused denied the charges, he asked them to come forward and explain to us because there are three witnesses who testify that the act was committed. The witnesses came forward and testified.

1st witness What did Heaven’s aunt say?

Heaven’s aunt, who was there at the time, testified. On that day, July 25, 2015, at three in the morning, me, Haven and her little sister were at home. The accused had a badge which he sold and used at home most of the time. After the accused’s son and deceased Haven were playing outside the yard, the accused’s daughter left the yard and went with her grandparents. After Heaven came back home, she went to the bathroom while me and Haven’s younger sister were eating.

Defendant’s house and ours are in the same compound. When I call you when you are late, you don’t say oh. Then her little sister came out and came running and called me Rosa Rosa. When I went out, there was a house where we could take a shower, then she fell and her tongue was sticking out. I was about to scream and grab her, but the outer door, which had never been closed, was hidden inside. I put her on the floor, opened the door and took her outside. Accused was lying on the couch with the television on. When I grabbed her and screamed, she didn’t tell me what happened. He did not leave the premises. People said it was Buddha. But her body from the front was cold.

She then states that they took her to Amen Hospital and the day after the baby died, she said that when she went to fetch a metal pan for a coffee maker from the accused’s house, she found one of Heaven’s shoes with scraps of household scraps inside the house. She also stated that the child did not have any illness before that, the door was not locked from the outside, only from the inside, and that no one was inside the premises except the accused.

2nd witness What did Heaven’s mother say?

That day, Haven said she was sick and went home with her partner. When we got home, neither the baby nor anyone else was there. I found the accused sitting on the sofa, he does not say anything about what happened to my daughter, he looks at me in shock. You are the only person I know who has no other relatives. I don’t know what it is, please tell me, he couldn’t talk to me out of the ordinary. He who rents me a house…just be quiet…there is no one inside or outside the premises. Two children came from outside, saying on the door, “Please tell me what she is and where you took her.” When I asked them what happened to her, they said that the Buddha ate her and took her to the Buddha’s house.

Please, if you know the house, take me to it. Then my colleague and the owner of the Bajaj asked what kind of person you are and brought him in from the Bajaj. As soon as Bajaju started to sit on the road, I started shouting that they have brought her to Amen Hospital. When I arrived she was covered and they said she was dead. When I saw her, her body was torn apart, her clothes were washed with water. While everyone else is crying, he just shakes and doesn’t cry. He is from his sisters and his family..everyone heard and he went with her baby, he was silent when he was at home….we lived together for two years, he said that his silence is because he dared her and killed her.

In the testimony given by her younger sister, she said that she found one foot of the child from the house and the other foot was with the corpse, and her panty which she wore in the morning was missing. Then, when we went to Life Fana Hospital for further investigation, the detective police examined him. While others are crying, he shakes and says to and fro. They took him in the ambulance and then after he got home he sneaked into the house and sat down. Without telling anyone about her rape, he went to the hospital toilet and said that she had been raped over the phone. He was then taken to the police station.

What about the 3rd witness, the forensic medicine specialist?

According to the statement given by the doctor before the court, in my examination of the dead body, her body was frozen, the lower part of her eye was sunken under her eye cap, her clothes were wet with water. There is something visible on her front neck about four centimeters apart from the rest of her body. She also had some friction on the outside of her thigh. Regarding her chastity, there was some stitching on it and a sign of redness around it. No sperm was found in the sample we took from her uterus. He said that it shows that there was a concussion on her back and hands as well.

The court gave a verdict for the accused to defend himself because the witnesses of the law testified according to the charges.

. What about the defendant’s witnesses?

Defendant presented four witnesses. According to the testimony given by the four witnesses, there was no noise in the compound, they saw the deceased’s mother’s sister carrying her out of the compound and they took her to Amen Clinic. One of them, I put her faith in her mouth when they heard that Amen Clinic had passed away and that the cause of her death was strangulation. One of them, I had a two-liter bottle of black tea and poured it on her. They testified that she died once strangulated and once raped.

. The decision of the court

Heaven stated that it was confirmed by the evidence that she died of strangulation. At that time, there was no other man in the compound apart from the accused, and the berm of the compound was unusually hidden from the inside and the compound was properly fenced, so it cannot be said that another person entered the compound and committed the crime. While the defendant was a landlord, he sat quietly when the child screamed that the child had fallen, and when the mother asked him where the child was, he was shaking without answering, one of her shoes was found with a sweeper from the house, and the child was raped when she arrived at the hospital. He mentioned that it was confirmed by written documents from Kela Life Hospital and Amen Medical Center.

The court also concluded that the child died due to the force and strangulation of the accused while she was threatening her because she was too young to withstand the pressure.

The second charge that the defendant killed Haven after threatening her to hide the crime was not presented, but he found him guilty only under 620(3) of the Criminal Code.

. About the punishment

According to the Criminal Code, the defendant was found guilty of a crime that was leveled at level 38 and the defendant committed the crime against a 6-year-old girl who could not defend herself. Accused said that I have no criminal record and the fact that I am the head of the family and decide the punishment. The court sentenced the defendant to 25 years in prison.

. About the source of the information

This information was obtained from a magazine article about the crime circulating on social networking sites. The article was published on the magazine’s page as a teacher’s decision on pages 10-13. There are a few places in the image that I could not see due to light reflection and dimming. What I tried to see.

1. Defendant’s objection and the court’s decision

He protested the charges saying that the defendant should not be charged with the crime of murder. Although the court did not accept this objection, it rejected the charge of murder committed to hide the rape, which the defendant asked to be charged with, and sentenced him only to the crime of rape. This shows that the court should have analyzed it in the judgment and put the legal reason for it, but it was ignored in the decision.

2. Article in which the charge is filed

Feven was seven years old when the incident happened, the court said in its decision. The law has a special provision for children under 13 years of age.

According to Section 627(5) of the Act, if sexual intercourse with a child under this age group results in the death of the child, the punishment is life imprisonment.

However, the prosecution filed a case based on Article 620(3) which requires rape of any woman or a woman who is not a child, when the crime results in death. Therefore, the charge should have been brought under the clause that punishes Heaven with a prison sentence of more than 25 years or life imprisonment, taking into account the fact that Haven was a child and the death caused by the act. Therefore, it seems that there is a gap in the case since its presentation.

3. Regarding the court’s evidence evaluation and conclusion

From the evidence mentioned in the verdict, the court confirmed that Haven was forced and threatened by the defendant. The documentary evidence shows that when Amen arrived at the medical center, she was dead and there were hand scratch marks on her neck. The specialist doctor also explained that there was a rash on her neck that was different from the rest of her body.

As the court mentioned, the defendant’s witnesses did not give a statement which strengthened the case but did not refute it. It is not clear from what reason the court did not explain the case that the court forced and killed her to hide the act. However, the court in its decision said that we can conclude from the circumstances that when the defendant was forcing and threatening her, she was a young child who could not withstand the pressure and died.

However, the evidence presented does not show that the accused died while he was raping her, but that he knew that he was going to kill her while he was raping her, and that he accepted the result and threw her in the shower area, and that he committed the act in his house. This shows that even if we go in the direction of the court’s conclusion, according to the principle of 60(b) of the Act of Rape, he has committed the combined crimes of rape and aggravated murder in one act of rape.

Therefore, it is not safe to say that the court’s conclusion shows that baby Haven died in the course of a criminal act or that the prosecution’s witnesses and the prosecution did not explain the legal procedure.

Of course, even if criminal guilt must be proven beyond doubt, rape and acts to cover it up are by their nature not done in public and are based on circumstantial evidence.

Therefore, the court, which confirmed through the words of witnesses that the defendant dared Haven, who was playing with her child, to pretend that someone else had committed the crime, threw one of her feet outside the house where her shoes were found, and then waited quietly.

. Regarding the proportionality of the punishment

In our criminal law, there is a rule that crimes can be considered overlapping and the resulting punishment should be lighter and heavier. According to this guideline, although it is the unmodified guideline mentioned by the Supreme Court in the decision, it is stipulated in guideline no. 2/2006 that if a sexual crime committed against a child under the age of thirteen results in death, it falls under level one and level 38. This tier ranges from life imprisonment to the death penalty. I believe that the defendant should have been sentenced to at least life imprisonment, because the fact that he killed a seven-year-old child and threw her body out of the house with his cruelty and shamelessness are enough to aggravate his crime, and the fact that he has a family or has not committed a crime should not make his sentence lighter than his crimes.

. Regarding the article in which the charge is filed

Regarding the article in which the case was filed, the court had to order that because Feven is a seven-year-old child, the law should be amended under Article 627(5), which deals with the crime of rape against children of this age. The reason why the Attorney General did not file the case under this provision and the court did not order this at least for the sake of justice is not clear.

. Haven’s age and condition

Decisions about children needing special protection should be made in a manner that prioritizes their interests and safety. Therefore, both the case and the decision made against Haven should have been based on this constitutional principle. The incident took place when a 7-year-old girl was in her own compound, in a compound that she had rented from the accused landlords and that her family believed was safe for her safety. It can be understood from the words of the witnesses that while she was playing with the accused child, he locked the yard from the inside so that no one could access it and committed the act on her and threw her in the place called ‘our shower’. The mother also testified that there were washing practices to cover up the incident. We did not believe that there was evidence that contradicted this, but I do not believe that the mere presence of witnesses such as Tebel Feseson are enough to cast doubt on the procedures by which the accused deliberately went to hide the act.

. The decision is about giving justice to Heaven and teaching

The case should be filed and decided by giving justice to the tragic act of 7-year-old Haven in accordance with the criminal law and strengthening the legal protection that children of this age need in a way that educates and warns others in a way that allows them to determine the highest level of punishment.

. What’s up with Heaven now?

I believe that the Zonal Attorney General should make public the appropriate information about the presentation of the case and the appeal to the Court of Appeal following the decision.

Again, this article is based on the author’s understanding and published information, as it is based on an article released by social media pages that is the decision of the court, so I ask that it be read with that in mind.

My message of peace and justice for Heaven. According to the legal system, a decision should be made that will spread justice and educate and warn against such crimes being committed against children.

(Written by lawyer Kidane Mekasha for EBC Cyber)