A popular action song, widely taught to children in Kenya and elsewhere to help protect them from sexual predation, has played a key role in detecting the rape of a four-year-old by her own father and in the father’s subsequent conviction and sentence. Giving her judgment on appeal in the matter, Kenyan high court judge Florence Muchemi also found that the trial court wrongly sentenced the father to 40 years in jail and she re-sentenced him to life in prison instead.
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In one of its first judgments of July, the high court in Kenya had me baffled. It was a case of defilement (the name given to child rape in Kenya) where the accused, the child’s father, was alleged to have raped his daughter, still just four years old at the time.
During 2023, the magistrate’s court found the father guilty and sentenced him to 40 years in prison. He appealed and the high court has now delivered its judgment on appeal.
Going through the evidence, the high court judge hearing the appeal, Florence Muchemi, explained how the abuse came to light. She wrote that ‘during break time’ at school the little girl went to sit next to her teacher ‘and started singing the private parts song and appeared emotional as she sang the song.’
What was this song, I wondered, and why did the teacher immediately know what to do next, bringing in a second teacher as a witness and helper to talk to the child, then reporting the matter to the police?
‘No-one should touch them’
An internet search filled in the gaps. In Kenya and in some other countries too, many teachers are helping children understand about inappropriate touching and staying safe from sexual predators by teaching them an action song, a kind of chant, accompanied by hand gestures.
The children tap their mouths, their chests, their genitals and their bottoms, while they sing ‘These are my private parts’. They add, ‘No-one should see them. No-one should touch them; no-one should squeeze them.’
Then, addressing an imagined, possible predator, they shake a warning finger and add, ‘If you touch my private parts, I will tell my teacher; I will tell my daddy; I will tell my mummy.’
Fun – but with serious potential
Teachers are shown how to teach the children the song and there are videos of some of these lessons in which everyone seems to be having a great time. But it can be extremely serious, as this case shows: The little girl at the centre of it all had learnt the song. She acted on what she had learned, and this led to her father’s arrest, conviction and sentence.
It turned out that her mother had left the family more than a year before because the father beat her, and so the child couldn’t ‘tell her mummy’. Nor could she ‘tell her daddy’ since he was the perpetrator. So she did as the song said, and found a time when she could be alone with her teacher, to tell her what was happening at home, and she introduced the difficult subject by singing the words of the song.
True, the song doesn’t deal with the very real problem that children lack words for these different ‘private parts’, thanks to cultural norms that often help predators. That lack adds to the difficulty children experience in reporting problems and even understanding their own bodies. But as this case shows, the song is a useful start, with the potential to empower children to call out and report abuse.
Father complains 40 year sentence too long
The father in this case – strangely, his name appears in full, unredacted, at the head of the judgment, meaning that the child’s surname will also be public knowledge – appealed against both conviction and sentence. He claimed he was wrongly convicted, and that the court hadn’t properly considered his defence and the evidence that could exonerate him. Further, he said, the sentence of 40 years was too long and unjustified. Though he protested he was innocent, he also argued that he was a first time offender and should thus have been shown more leniency.
The state, however, argued that his conviction was sound and that his sentence of 40 years ought to be increased to a life sentence.
In her judgment, Muchemi went through the trial evidence and concluded that the magistrate’s findings were sound. There was no possibility of mistaken identity. She also noted the state’s submission that the child seemed to be ‘very mindful of her father’ and wouldn’t have falsely implicated him in court as suggested by the father.
The child’s age was proved. Medical findings also confirmed the essential element of penetration, and the child’s evidence was ‘cogent, consistent and not shaken during cross-examination’. She concluded that the prosecution’s case was ‘airtight’.
Courts dispute what ‘life sentence’ means
Apart from the ‘private parts’ song, there is another element of legal interest in the case, specifically related to the father’s sentence. In 2023, when the trial court sentenced the father to 40 years, rather than the life sentence prescribed by law in such cases, it did so because of a decision by the court of appeal, current and applicable at the time of the father’s trial. According to that decision, life imprisonment in Kenya must be ‘translated’ to mean 30 years.
Subsequently, however, the supreme court – Kenya’s apex court – has held that in finding a life sentence to mean 30 years, the appeal court had taken on the mantle of the law maker, and acted beyond its jurisdiction.
Apex court asked parliament for clarification – but eight years on, still no response
The supreme court judges also pointed out that, in December 2017, they recommended that the attorney general and parliament should develop legislation on what constitutes a life sentence. But despite that recommendation, and an order that the judgment be placed before the Speakers of both the senate and the national assembly, nothing has been forthcoming on the question from either office of parliament.
Since there’d been no change about the meaning of a life sentence, the courts couldn’t, of their own will, make such a change, the supreme court held. And until the legislature spoke, a life sentence meant just that. In the case of the Sexual Offences Act, the punishment was clear: anyone who raped a child aged 11 or younger ‘shall, upon conviction, be sentenced to imprisonment for life.’
The supreme court judgments on the correct approach in such matters had to be followed in relation to this case, said Muchemi. In addition, the child at the centre of the case was very young, and was ‘left seriously traumatised and her life messed up by her own care giver.’ She therefore held that the sentence imposed on the father had to be increased to life imprisonment.
Success of a simple song
This will surely be an important decision for Kenyans working to protect children from the widely acknowledge problem of sexual abuse. It shows that, in addition to macro policy efforts, there is also value in simple play and song strategies that teach even very young children their bodies are not to be violated by others. And what they should do if this does happen.
It also stresses the risk run by perpetrators of child sexual abuse – conviction will lead to a life in prison.
Example of private parts song lesson
- Written on 6 July 2025