Sabwe Abdu v. Uganda

Appellant was convicted of defilement of a girl less than 18 years old and was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. Trial testimony established that while the 13-year-old girl and her younger sister were fetching water at a well, appellant, disguised as a ghost, ordered the two to remove their dresses, blindfolded them, and led them through a swamp to some bush where he had sexual intercourse with the older sister. He then left the sisters in the bush overnight, and the sisters’ father was unable to find them. Appellant then went to the father’s house and told him that he could use his witchcraft powers to find the sisters if the father paid him two goats and two chickens. Upon payment, appellant went back to the brush and brought the sisters to his home, claiming that they needed treatment. While at Appellant’s home, the older sister told her father that appellant had raped her. At trial, the court rejected appellant’s defense that a ghost had abducted the sisters and he was merely using his witchcraft powers to help find the girls. Instead, the court relied on the sisters’ testimony, who claimed that they recognized appellant’s voice. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence. First, the court found that appellant lived only a quarter mile away from the sisters and used to come to their home and speak to their father, thus supporting the assertion that the sisters were able to identify appellant through voice recognition. Second, the court found that appellant’s witchcraft defense could not be reasonably believed and that the fact that he immediately located the sisters upon payment supported the inference that he was the one who brought them there.