Imagine serving a life sentence for a crime you never committed, and then years later your own daughter confesses to falsely accusing you and insists that she was coerced by the mother to do so.

Julius Wambua has already served 10 years at the Kamiti Maximum Prison, and after a chilling confession from his daughter, he hopes that the journey of being a free man has begun.

His troubles all started when he divorced his first wife in 2007 following disagreements over land and married a second wife.

Speaking exclusively to Citizen TV’s Lulu Hassan, Mr. Wambua said his ex-wife approached him and asked for her share of their land so that they could go their separate ways.

“I sold the land at Ksh.150, 000; and we split that amount equally, I gave her Ksh.75, 000 and remained with a similar amount,” said. Mr. Wambua.

“Then I added some money on top of my share, bought one more acre piece of land and started building; then I married another woman.”

According to him, it was at this point in his life that his ex-wife brought back their children for him to look after and – after discussing it with his new wife – he took them in.

A year later, the prisoner says, he bought the children their own piece of land and enrolled them into school while still continuing to build on his own land.

However, upon completion of building on his land, and during the school break, his first wife requested to be visited by the children; to which he agreed on condition that they would not stay longer than two days as he had already paid their holiday tuition fee.

It was during this period that, one day while he was out buying vegetables at the market, he was accosted by police officers who took him into custody.

“They asked my name and I told them. Then they said ‘we have been sent by the OCS to take you in.’ I asked what was wrong and I was told ‘you will know ahead,’” narrated the distraught man.

He was then arraigned in court and charged with rape where his own daughter – the alleged victim – testified against him.

“When we were in court, the child spoke with her head bent, looking down; she did not even want to look me in the eye,” he added.

“I requested the sitting judge to have a DNA test done but they told me it was costly. I asked how much it was and, when they said Ksh.60, 000, I said I had that money and was willing to pay for the test myself.”

Mr. Wambua further stated: “The judge, however, told me that the case was already in progress and that the time for a DNA test had already passed.”

He was then sentenced to life in prison at Kamiti; a place where he says days are long and nights are dreadful, adding that he lives an isolated life because nobody visits him.

“I did not rape my daughter because I loved her just as much as her siblings and their mother,” he said.

“I loved and accepted her as my child the day she was born. Even to this day, I would welcome her back into my life with a clean heart because she is my child and I forgave her a long time ago.”

Lulu Hassan then reached out to the said girl – Dorcas — through the contacts of the convict’s relatives from his court file and, when she arrived at the prison and met her father for the first time in a decade, there was pin-drop silence in the visitor’s bay as emotions ran high.

“My mother did not like the woman you met after you left her because she (mother) thought that she (new wife) would be the one to inherit your property. So she came up with the plan to have you sent to jail so that she could sell your property and inherit your wealth,” narrated Dorcas to her father.

“She (mother) called me aside and told me that, because dad had married another woman, she would use me to send him to jail.”

The girl added that her mother then called a friend of hers and the three of them went to a nearby hospital where presumed medical documents/reports were forged.

“Then she called some police officers who told me what to say when I went to court. They said if I didn’t follow the script then I would be the one to go to prison,” she added.

Dorcas also stated that she has been suffering while living alone ever since her father was jailed since her mother went off to another marriage and her siblings also later went their separate ways.

“She told me you were at Shimo La Tewa and said that people who go there don’t survive so for a while I always thought you were dead,” she said to her father.

Mr. Wambua has reportedly lodged an appeal for his case and is hopeful that he will finally be acquitted of the crime.

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