Harare - A 14-year-old HIV-positive schoolboy from Makonde District has been sentenced to three years probation at a training institute in Kadoma, 130 km west of Harare.
He was found guilty on five counts of sexually abusing girls aged between four and seven years.
The abuses took place while the children were on their way to and from school. He would abuse the girls and then order younger boys to follow suit, threatening to beat them up if they refused.
At least seven girls were abused.
The state-run Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday that the boy who, cannot be named because of his age, had never been to school when he was adopted by a local non-governmental organisation and enrolled at a local primary school with his two siblings this year.
He was enrolled into Grade 2 together with children who were way younger than him, so that he could start at an elementary stage. Generally, Grade 2 children are aged between six and seven.
The abuses were discovered during a routine family club meeting organised by an HIV and Aids prevention project where parenting, family health, culture and traditions are discussed.
"During the discussions, minute details of the abuse started coming out from some parents in the community before full investigations and tests on the girls were conducted," a social worker who declined to be named for professional reasons told the newspaper.
School children are encouraged to walk in groups on their way to and from school owing to the overgrown grass in the area, and the boy would take the girls into a bushy area where he abused them.
Some of the girls are now undergoing counselling to cope with the abuses, amid fears that they may have contracted HIV.
It is understood that the boy's father and stepmother are mentally challenged and that he had previously been staying with a relative as a cattle herd.
Chinhoyi regional magistrate Felix Mawadze found him guilty on five counts of rape and sentenced him to three years probation at Kadoma Training Institute, charging that he was a danger to the community.
The magistrate refused to listen to the father's plea for the child to be released into his custody saying that the father did not look after his children properly.
All the father's three children do not have birth certificates, yet the law stipulates that parents should obtain birth certificates for their children soon after birth.
Xinhua