Celebrated musician Suzanna Owiyo has empathised with former TV anchor Esther Arunga who is facing a long jail term in Australia.
The former KTN presenter will be sentenced on Thursday by an Australian court after she confessed of lying to police on the circumstances that led to the death of her son Sinclair Timberlake.
Arunga on Monday pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and will appear before Justice Martin Burns in two days time for sentencing.
Three-year-old Sinclair died in 2014 in his parents home in Kallangur where his mother told police she passed on after falling down the stairs.
A postmortem examination, however, revealed that the kid died "as a result of a severe blunt force such as punching or stamping or similar" and his injuries were inconsistent with a fall, according to the Australian Associated Press.
A few weeks after Sinclair's death, her husband, Quincy Timberlake, was involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility and that is when Arunga spilled the beans.
The former broadcast journalist told detectives she went into the bathroom on the night of June 17, 2014 to find her husband punching the kid's stomach several times.
"He then threw him against the wall," observed Arunga, adding Quincy claimed his mission was to remove "devil in the boy's stomach".
Following the development, Owiyo pitied Arunga and opined her blossoming life took a wrong turn the moment she joined cult-like Finger of God Church.
"Whatever happened to the beautiful, brilliant Esther Arunga is something to date I can’t understand. She inspired many at the height of her career but when she joined Quincy Timberlake and Joseph Hellon with their PlaCenta Party, sijui Finger of God Church. Things went south," the musician tweeted on Monday.
Arunga, who is also a trained lawyer, joined the church founded by renowned Kenyan jazz musician Joseph Hellon in 2009, and that is where she met Quincy and they married on March 9, 2010, a month after resigning from KTN.
The trio later formed Placenta Party (Platinum Centralizer and Unionist Party) of Kenya and announced a bid to contest for presidency in the 2013 general election.
Hellon was to be the party's presidential candidate with Arunga as his running mate.
They never vied after Arunga and her husband moved to Australia following release of Quincy who had been arrested on allegations of running a cult sect (Finger of God Church).