Gardener jailed for abusing school boys

Senior Court Reporter 

A 32-year-old gardener has been jailed 16 months for sexually assaulting two boys from a secondary school in Harare four occasions.

The school gardener was initially jailed for 48 months when he appeared before magistrate Patricia Mazvita Kamwanda.

Ms Kamwanda had sentenced the gardener to 12 months on each count before conditionally setting aside eight months.

On the first incident, sometime in December last year a 13-year-old visited the gardener at his place asking for grapes and he sexually assaulted him while harvesting grapes.

In December last year, another 14-year-old boy from the school neighbourhood, visited the gardener to collect a ball. He was sexually assaulted.

Through his lawyer Mr Liberty Gono, the gardener had denied the charges, saying he only gave the two boys grapes separately and his cellphone to play and download games. 

“When the two complainants were caught viewing pornographic materials on their phones, the parents of the complainants suspected that it was the accused person who had given them the pornographic materials.

“This created bad blood between accused person and parents of complainants.

“There was not a single day that the accused person showed the complainants pornographic materials on his cellphone or a single day that he touched or perused any private part of the complainants,” he said.