The Special Gender Based Violence (GBV) court in Juba has sentenced a man to 10 years imprisonment for defiling a sixteen-year girl in November 2019.

Reech Chol, 24, was found quality under section 247 and sub section two of South Sudan Penal Code 2008. The law prohibits forced intercourse with a partner without his or her consent. In reference to this law, Chol was a handed a jail term not exceeding 14 years.

Chol defended himself using sub section 2 as he argued that he had the consent of the girl and she had agreed to be his wife before committing the offense. But this argument was trashed by the presiding Judge Francis Amum on account that the girl was not mature to make informed choices.

“A consent given by a man or women below the age of 18 cannot be deemed as consent in the context of sub-section two of the penal code,” he ruled.

Compensation

Chol was also told to pay SSP 500,000 as compensation to the parents of the girl on Wednesday last week.

He became the third man to be sentenced by the court within a week, since its inauguration early December, 2020. He was given grace period of 15 days to appeal the verdict.

South Sudan recorded over 600 sexual and gender based violence cases in 2020 with many more an accounted for as per the report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The incidents included rape, child marriage and sexually assault against women and girls. Many of these cases were perpetrated by men in uniforms across the country.

The judge said the cases were on the increase making it difficult for the court to quantify pending GBV cases awaiting trial.

However, he added that the establishment of the court has improved the government management of the GBV cases in Juba and this needed to be applied in other parts.

“Now we have a specialised court, working only on cases of gender based violence. So that alone is an improvement,” Amum said.