Online Reporter
Zvikomborero Parafini
A POLICE officer says some of the girls they rescued from Madzibaba Ishmael Chokurongerwa’s shrine in Nyabira in March last year pleaded with the officers to kill them rather than take them away from Lily Farm.
She said they quickly realised that many of the girls had been brainwashed by Madzibaba Ishmael.
The trial resumed yesterday.
The State, represented by Oscar Madhume, led evidence from Getrude Chitakira, who’s one of the police officers who were in charge of the investigations.
Chitakira told magistrate Estere Chivasa that they raided Madzibaba Ishmael’s shrine at Lily Farm on March 13, last year, as a team of officers from the Victim Friendly Unit and in the company of some social workers.
“We were asked to interview the children who were suspected to have been sexually abused.
“We had gone there to interview the children and take them to the hospital to be medically examined after reports of rampant abuse of young girls and sexual harassment.
“The leaders of the church said they didn’t have the powers to gather everyone and said Madzibaba Ishmael was the only person who could do that but he had already been arrested.
“They later complied and gathered everyone and they all came to the shrine where we wanted to get the girls whose names had been written on a list of alleged victims.
“No one responded to the names and they were laughing and it appeared as if they were hearing the names for the first time, so we were then tasked to pick out all the young girls so that we could interview them away from the crowd.
“We talked to them and told them that we had received information that they were being sexually harassed and forced into child marriages and they responded to us in a chorus saying ‘Takura hatisi vana vadiki’.
“We asked them to show us what showed that they were adults, like their birth certificates, but they said they didn’t have them.
“We told them that we would take them for age estimation at the hospital and they refused saying they couldn’t go because of their religion.”
Chitakira told the court that it took them over two hours to get all the victims on the bus only to be faced by another challenge.
“As soon as they got on the bus, they started crying, screaming, saying it was better for us to kill them than to take them away from Lily Farm.Our boss then spoke to the older people who were there to produce the children’s birth certificates before we left and a few brought the birth certificates and we saw that some were a bit older and we released them.
“One of the girls came to me and said to the officer, these children didn’t go to school so whatever you say, they won’t understand where you’re coming from and urged me to get some older women from the church to assist us with controlling the children.
“We did that and the children complied, the older women accompanied the children to Chinhoyi Hospital where age estimates were done.We were left with 24 children, who were below 18, and five of them were virgins and the rest were not, some were even pregnant.”
Later that month, they got a tip-off that the three of the complainants were being kept at a house in Mufakose.
“I was given the docket and discovered that DNA tests had been done and I had to follow them up, the results came out on 7 October last year. The three results showed that he had fathered their children but the first complainant said she didn’t know how the child was said to be his in the results as she had her boyfriend, Tinashe, who had ghosted her after he impregnated her, so she didn’t know his whereabouts.
“The second one said the same and didn’t know the whereabouts of the man who had impregnated her and third one denied ever engaging in sexual activity with Chokurongerwa and didn’t know the whereabouts of the father of her child.
“That’s when we saw that he had manipulated these children because one can only bear children through sex.”
In cross examination by Chokurongerwa’s lawyer Msindo Hungwe Chitakira conceded that they never received any complaints from any one of sexual abuse and confirmed that three victims have been consistent that they were never forced into sex by Chokurongerwa.
The trial resumes on February 19.
Mathew Masinge
