US Couple Face Death Penalty in Uganda as They Are Hit with New Child Trafficking Charge
If these accusations are true… always remember and never forget: contrary to what American conservatives go on about, marriage and parenthood do NOT make people more godly, mature, and ethical, nor do Nuclear Families rescue societies.
Based on what I’m seeing here, though, I don’t think this couple did anything to support receiving the death penalty. Maybe some fines or a bit of jail time, but the death penalty is extreme for these accusations.
Dec 21, 2022
by Neirin Gray
A US couple is facing the death penalty in Uganda after they were hit with an aggravated child trafficking charge – on top of a child torture charge they are already battling.
Nicholas Spencer and his wife Mackenzie Leigh Mathias Spencer, both 32, have been in custody in Uganda since December 9 after they were charged with the aggravated torture of a 10-year-old child.
The boy, who is HIV positive, was living under their care in a suburb of Kampala.
Police said that the couple would force the boy to spend the day barefoot and naked, would often make him squat in awkward positions – with his head facing the floor or his hands spread widely – and that he was only served cold meals from a fridge.
The American citizens are being held at Luzira Maximum Security Prison – the country’s only maximum security jail, which houses its death row inmates.
If found guilty of the crimes, the couple may be put on death row in the African country because of the fresh charge lodged against them.
The couple arrived in Uganda in 2017 to volunteer at a US-based non-profit in the town of Jinja, before moving to Naguru, an upmarket Kampala suburb, to work at a start-up, police said.
Prosecutors accuse them of having recruited, transported and kept the 10-year-old child for ‘purposes of exploitation,’ according to the charge sheet.
A lawyer for the couple, who was not identified, was quoted by Ugandan newspaper The Monitor as dismissing the case as a ‘fishing expedition’ by authorities, saying they had no evidence. She was also quoted as saying the new charge ‘doesn’t make sense.’
In an interview with the newspaper, a woman who said she was the boy’s caretaker spoke anonymously about what she saw and also alleged he had a camera in his room watching his every move.
The caretaker said: ‘I wanted to leave the job, but I knew if I left without doing something about it, the torture would continue.’
She added that the couple only abused one of their three foster children because they claimed the 10-year-old boy was stubborn, hyperactive and mentally unstable, and they used the punishments to keep him in line.
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