Justice Celia Nagawa of the Family Division of the High Court has dissolved the marriage of Safaki Davut a Turkish politician and Violet Ddembe a Ugandan.
In her judgement, Justice Nagawa confirmed that Safaki proved beyond reasonable doubt that Ddembe subjected him to cruelty noting that the wife’s conduct which he complained about was serious and went beyond the ordinary wear and tear of a marriage.
“This court emphasizes that mental cruelty encompasses conduct that causes deep anguish, disappointment, frustration, and psychological trauma. The discovery that the Petitioner had been deceived for over seven years about a child he thought the Respondent had given birth to could cause any reasonable man severe mental distress,” the judge stated.
In his unchallenged evidence, fifty-five-year-old Safaki told court that he came to Uganda in 2013 as a student at Bugema University at the School of Theology and he completed his studies in 2016.
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In 2016, he married Ddembe at the Registry of Marriages in Kampala and they started living as a husband and wife at Bugema University Guest House.
However, six months into their marriage, he developed problems with president Tayyip Erdogan’s government because of being a member of one of the opposition political parties there. So, when he went back to his home country, he was arrested charged and imprisoned for seven years while his wife lived in Uganda.
He was released in 2023 and he immediately travelled back to Uganda to meet his family especially the new born baby because by the time he left Uganda, his wife had confirmed to him that she was pregnant.
He was shocked when the wife chased him insisting that she no longer wanted to continue with the marriage and when he demanded to see the child, she told him that she aborted the child.
He testified in court that when he was in prison, Ddembe pressurised his family to send her money to take care of her and the child which the family did and they kept supporting her financially by sending her groceries for the home from Turkey.
He added that before going back to Turkey, he had formed a company which had assets including motor vehicles and other properties but Ddembe used the opportunity when he was in prison to steal the property and more than $5000.
The matter was determined ex-part because when Ddembe was served with summons to answer the Petitioner, she did not file a response but instead sent a message (WhatsApp) stating that; “she is not interested in the divorce since they had cases against each other at Bugema Police Station vide CRB/SD/20/2023 and BBO CRB 554/2023”.
She further added that she could not sign divorce papers since she did not expect to get married again.
Safaki told court that his relationship with Ddembe was full of grief and extremely misery because of the wife’s abusiveness, desertion, unrestrained antagonism, aggression, rage, erratic, malevolent behaviour, and disrespect.
He testified that the wife at all material times acted in ways that occasioned him immense pain, distress, misery, desolation and mental anguish and she was very disrespectful to him and on several occasions, she ridiculed and scoffed him in front of their friends and relatives calling him a terrorist
In conclusion, the judge dissolved the marriage noting that the decree nisi shall become absolute after six months from the date of her judgment, unless cause is shown to the contrary.
