Koffi Olomide handed sentence for raping 15-year-old girl

Piece by: Geoffrey Mbuthia
Entertainment

A French court on Monday handed Congolese singer Koffi Olomide a two-year suspended prison sentence for the statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15.

Olomide went on trial after four former dancers claimed he sexually assaulted them several times between 2002 and 2006. The assaults allegedly happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in France, including at a villa outside Paris where the women said they were held against their will.

The court also dismissed the charges against two men accused of being complicit in the assaults. It was not the first time Olomide had been charged with violence.

He was briefly jailed in DR Congo in 2016 for kicking one of his dancers and had already been given a suspended three-month prison sentence in 2012 for striking his producer.

He is also currently sought by Zambian police for striking a Rwandan photojournalist in Lusaka in 2012.

Olomide already had a brush with the law in France, with a court finding him guilty of tax fraud in 2006.