A 20-year-old man convicted in a Minnesota court of criminal intercourse with two girls, aged four and nine, will spend a maximum of 176 days in jail.
Mohamed Bakari Shei entered a type of plea allowed under Minnesota law in December 2022 that maintains his innocence while acknowledging the evidence against him would lead to a conviction by a jury if the case went to trial.
Mohamed Bakari Shei, 20, of Rochester was convicted of raping two girls ages approximately 4 and 8 years old when the abuse began. Charges say the sexual assaults occurred multiple times.
He was sentenced Monday to 180 days in local jail.
This is our @MNCourts system. pic.twitter.com/edXR24xpUS
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In addition to the jail sentence of less than six months, District Judge Jacob Allen ordered Shei to be subject to 30 years of supervised probation.
The judge also ordered Shei to complete 200 hours of community work service.
Shei was accused of engaging in unlawful intercourse with a 9-year-old girl several times, beginning on Mother’s Day 2018. The second victim was another girl aged around 4 or 5 in 2021, who was subject to the same criminal acts.
According to local reporters, Olmsted County, Minnesota, Senior Attorney Thomas Gort explained that Shei’s plea deal included a stay of adjudication and no prison time to prevent the prosecution from being prolonged.
Shei could have challenged his status as an adult offender since he was around 16 when he committed the series of assaults.
With good behavior, the defendant will serve a maximum of 116 days in the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center. His jail sentence is set to begin on February 13, 2023.
At the sentencing hearing, one of Shei’s victims gave a statement about the impact the attacks from the defendant had had on her life. “There is no moving on or getting over it. I’ve tried,” she stated.
A family member of the second victim spoke directly to Shei at the sentencing hearing, telling him that he would “answer” for the violent assaults that caused the child to become detached and introverted.
Shei’s plea deal does not require him to register as an offender against minor children on the Minnesota state registry.
The case highlights the severe and lasting impact that assaults of this nature against young children have on victims, their families and society as a whole. Americans can only hope that if cases of this type draw national attention, serious criminal reform aimed toward justice for children will be promoted.
