Kenya: New Book on the Difficulties faced by Sex Workers Out

East African Standard by Goro wa Kamau 18th August 2012

Title: A Walk at Midnight

Author: Catherine Wanjohi

Publisher: Life Bloom Services International 

Please visit this site to get in touch with the author

A Walk at Midnight is the story of the author’s journey with sex workers as she attempts to rehabilitate and inspire them with a new sense of dignity and wholesomeness. It is a journey driven by a need to give these abused women and girls a second chance in life.

It all begun quite dramatically in 2002 when the author, then a principal in a girls’ secondary school found a letter from a parent addressed to her on her desk. The parent who was HIV-positive wrote: “Teacher, you’ve been very kind to me and my girls and I am sorry I wasn’t able to attend the parents meeting last weekend … I have been sick … I don’t know how long I will live. Should I die soon, I will live my daughters with you.” Why would a dying woman have the confidence to write such a letter to her daughters’ school principal?

The letter was traumatising. Now Wanjohi understood why the youngest of the woman’s daughters had asked for permission to go to hospital in Nairobi and why she had attempted suicide when the permission was denied.

She arranged visit the ailing woman together with her daughter. After the visit, the author wondered how many of her students may be similarly affected by HIV/Aids only to discover there were several of them. The author responded by supporting the establishment of peer counselling clubs in her school. Catherine Gathoni, the girl who had just recently attempted suicide, became one of the most active participants in these clubs. She has told her story in the book Can Scars Become Stars?

The author learnt from the girls in the peer counselling clubs about the kind of homes most of her students came from — broken homes mostly headed by poor women for whom paying school fees was a struggle. In addition, those mothers who were infected with HIV/Aids had to deal with problems of social stigma. From then on any time a female parent came to see her she encouraged her to share what other story she might be holding back.

“The stories were often about negligent and irresponsible husbands, early marriages, poverty and single parenthood — voices of what really happened at home, in the family, in our society. Issues that could not be addressed in the narrow confines of the school compound.”

This realisation culminated in the author’s resignation from her school principal’s job. She founded Life Bloom Services International, an organisation through which she started working with sex workers.

Attempted suicide

At the start, it was a baptism of fire, a personally traumatising experience. A Walk at Midnight documents the lives of numerous abused women and girls who are forced to work on the streets of our cities and towns peddling their flesh in an effort to feed their children and often-poor families. Abused and stigmatised, most of these women have to be high on alcohol and drugs in order to numb their minds and conscience against the violence meted on them by their customers and law enforcement agencies.

The book is full of touching anecdotes from the lives of these abused women. Beyond the fear of the consequences of reckless, sometimes unprotected sex, their daily encounters with criminals and other shadowy characters that prowl the sex dens and the violence that accompanies their lives, these women are our ordinary sisters. Like all mothers, they want a better life for their children.

The author, a co-traveller with these women in their struggles, documents how her Life Bloom International Services works closely with Government agencies such as hospitals, prisons, the Provincial Administration, the Church and owners of bars and lodgings in Naivasha and other places where her organisation is active. She ensures the sex workers get access to medical and spiritual care as well as dignified treatment from such agencies as the police when they, inevitably, get in trouble. Through her organisation, the author teams up with well-wishers to train the women in leadership and counselling, trade and vocations, reproductive health, peace-building, basic and computer literacy among a range of other employable skills in a bid to give the sex workers a second chance in life

Acting Against Gender Violence: Kenyatta University GBV Conference 2012 Lessons

Milicent Agutu

The First International Gender Based Violence Conference took place at the Kenyatta University on the 1^st to 3^rd August 2012. The theme of the conference was “Creating safe spaces: A multi disciplinary approach to gender based violence. The conference was enriched by a confluence of policy makers, practitioners and academics who provided different perspectives on GBV.

Gender Based Violence as defined by UNESCO (1999) entails “acts likely to result into physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including such acts as coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life (UNESCO 1999 p.53)”. Violence significantly hinders the ability of individuals to fully participate in, and contribute to their communities – economically, politically, and socially. It is a human rights violation or abuse; public health challenge; and a barrier to civil, social and economic participation. GBV is also associated to limited access to education, adverse health outcomes, lost households productivity, reduced income and increased costs.

The main organizers of the conference were  AMWIK, Wangu Kanja Foundation, COVAW, CREAW, Menken, The Coexist Initiative, supported by United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, USAID, APHIA Kamili, APHIA PLUS, APHIA PLUS –Bonde, TROCAIRE Working for a Just World, Population Council, SWEDEN, Norad, Elion John AIDS Foundation, LVCT among the others. Kenyatta University the main organizer hosted the conference.

GBV was explored in the context of family, community and state. At the level of the family an examination was made on how the traditional gender roles, societal constructs and culture do promote GBV. At the state level it was felt that combating GBV both nationally and internationally needs to go in tandem with the need to alter the existing paradigms. The conference called for a recognition that GBV undermines not only the safety, and human rights of the millions of individuals who experience it, but also the public health, economic stability, the security of nations.

Insights

 

1. From the conference presentations it was clear that  GBV is enhanced by traditional structures that reinforce and sanction gender inequality. These structures may be socio-cultural, political, economic and legal and they vary from family to family, community to community and state to state. In many cases GBV was trivialized by the traditional society and people who are culprits of GBV never felt that it was an offense. It was hence considered normal and macho to mete violence against women by “beating the hell out of them.” In some cases women got used to being violated and thought that it was something normal. Hence the woman lived in terror and always expecting/ waiting to be punished for any trivial issue or at the man’s pleasure.

2. A common cultural practice that violates the dignity of the woman is the female genital mutilation (FGM) practiced by several societies. The effects are severe as FGM and are associated with both psychological and health problems. Women risk infections; including problems in their urinary system, obstetric and gynecological complications, abdominal pain and may also emit discharges. The circumcision destroys sexual function and precludes enjoyment of sexual relations. The worst consequence includes the fact that those undergoing FGM risk infertility, complications during child births or to the extreme deaths during delivery.

3. GBV happens within families and takes place either under the full view of the public or in closed doors. The main victims are mostly women and children. There is acceptance of GBV in the families/community and lack of acceptance of sensitive issues; e.g.  talking about  sex is regarded as a taboo. On the other hand common language has been used to promote gender violence. Most words that demean women are considered as normal in the family and society. Hence suffering within a family may go on for a lifetime and may never be reported. Observers too may never intervene to help stopping it. The failure to report spousal violence is attributed to the  lack of community support and absence of approppriate community structures to combat it. On the other hand, the fact that the public (neighbours or friends) does not intervene, shows the extent in which GBV is generally an accepted and condoned societal norm.

4. On the other hand there are no specific anti-GBV laws under which perpetrators can be charged. Crimes of this nature therefore are tried under various laws, such as the penal code, sexual offenses act, counter trafficking act etc. This has the danger that in the long run the victims may not get justice in cases of severe bodily harm and the culprits walk free to continue abusing others women. There is also a feeling that there is little political will to tackle gender based violence by enacting the pending bills.

5. Efforts to address the problem of GBV is also hampered by lack of credible data. Or where this data exists it has never been used by researchers. This means therefore that there is a great divide between the academia, practitioners and policy makers. This divide is bound to make the different approaches to addressing the problem weaker.  However when researchers will find data depositories from the practitioners, then they will be able to show the magnitude of the problem. Understanding the scale, zenith and  scope of the problem will help both the state and the practitioners develop effective strategies to address GBV.

There is also a misconception of the role played by GBV researchers. They tend to merge gender work with feminine activism. Lack of awareness and sensitization among the people and misinformation on Gender; gender being regarded as wholly a women’s issue thus disassociation by men counterparts. Also there is a tendency that students working on gender  are not encouraged to pursue internship with organizations tackling the problem of  GBV. Universities on the other hand have missed in their role which is to teach, research and community outreach. University research should aim to impact communities and help initiate change where it is needed.

6. The conference also looked into human rights concerns and how women (and men) access and obtain justice. It was acknowledged that there are tremendous improvements in the way women victims of GBV are safeguarded.  However the challenge of reporting cases and successful prosecution remains a major impediment despite the presence of laws addressing Violence Against Women.

7. The government on the other hand has not treated the enactment of the pending gender related bills with urgency.  Article 45(5) of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 mandated parliament to enact legislation for the protection of the family unit. One of the initiatives that have been undertaken is to consolidate all the laws governing marriage. Currently, the Protection against Domestic Violence Bill 2012, The Marriage Bill 2012, The Matrimonial Property Bill 2012 have been drafted and forwarded to the Commission on the Implementation of Constitution (CIC). Domestic Violence Bill 2012 besides providing the legal framework with a law specifically addressing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), also empowers the courts to provide protection and orders in favor of victims of domestic violence. Areas for advocacy explored at the meeting were:- The P3 forms and the gazettement of the post rape care (PRC), Funding for GBV, Policy reforms to include a special police unit on gender, Funding and services towards psychosocial support and related post IPV attention

8. The Kenyan Constitution has made Gender and women a core focus of our Nation. The Bills of  Rights provides for equality and freedom from discrimination; thus women and men have right to equal treatment, including the right to equal opportunities in political, economic, cultural and social spheres. Leadership and Integrity Bill – election of women to elective positions; 1/3 of women representatives in the parliament and all elective posts, The Legislature – Promotion of Marginalized Groups; women being part. Devolved Government – county executive committees; Stipulates that the numbers appointed under clause (2) (b) shall not exceed one-third of the county assembly, if the assembly has less than thirty members; or ten, if the assembly has thirty or more members. Land and Environment – Legislation on land; (iii)  that regulate the recognition and protection of matrimonial property and in particular the matrimonial home during and on the termination of marriage and (iv) protect the dependents of deceased person holding interests in any land, including the interest of spouses in actual occupation of land.

Combating GBV

1. There is a need to network with actors against GBV from all sectors of the society; practitioners, academia, policy makers and donors.

2. There is need to empower the women and the girls economically. The government could consider making a provision against GBV within the  National Budget. Women’s empowerment is critical to build a stable Nation and democratic societies.

3. Gender work should be guided by good research that borrows from multi-disciplinary perspectives? Researchers should also consider pursuing a multi-sectoral, dimensional and issues approaches; prevention of GBV, sexual issues, language, culture etc .

4. Create a gender based violence data base of researchers (men and women), , research on how constitution will help solve the  GBV challenge, research on how language escalates GBV, engagement of public/community in their issues, research on how technology can enhance or speed GBV (technology to collect and disseminate data).

5. Actors should be assisted to become socially innovative. This can be done through the formation of communities of practice that will enhance the emergence of best practice in combating the problem of GBV. Education should be a priority and it should reach all the structures of the society. Documentations will need to be made on the important dimensions of service such as advocacy, psycho-social assistance, economic assistance, legal assistance, safe havens etc. On the other hand it is important for organizations to share how they assist women and children victims from abusive family relationships by holistic services provision.

Call for Action

 

1. Ending gender-based violence will mean changing social cultural concepts about masculinity, and that process must actively engage men, whether they be policy makers, parents, spouses or young boys. Faith communities, corporations, institutions have a role to play in this process. The whole country should be educated to act against gender based violence.

2. The Government need to enact urgently the Marriage Bill 2012 and the Matrimonial Property Bill 2012, this will also help in defining gender based violence.

3. There should be interrogation of culture, traditions, attitudes and beliefs and lastly what kind of programs to put for different category of people.

 

4. There is need for regional mechanisms (for advocacy & lobby) that would see the government set space, policy and to do the implementation of programs to support women and girl child.

5. There is need for every one to watch their language as language can prevent or enhance GBV. Taking responsibility on language use, is therefore quite important.  Media  should also be careful to portray women as  language as sex symbols as they risk becoming platforms for GBV.

6. There is need to come up with simple programs of creating awareness and sensitization, social-economic and political empowerment of women and reinstatement/establishment of one stop centre.

 

Sexual Violence Suffered by Commercial Sex Workers in Kenya

Posted by East African Standard 15th August 2012

Disgusting. That is what many people think about commercial sex workers. Historically, the men who have kept these women’s business thriving over time are not condemned.

Although it takes two to tango, for the sex workers’ haters, the man has no problem.

The man is like a shadow; always there but no one remembers him.

So when two sex workers, let’s call them Catherine and Agnes, were beaten up and abused by a man who solicited their services, the two women suffered silently.

They knew no one could listen to them, let alone believe their explanation.

No dignity
Catherine was in the commercial sex work for ten years. Despite the danger involved such as being infected with HIV/Aids and the ultimate stigmatisation associated with it, she hang on – for the money.

Catherine, who is now a peer educator of commercial sex workers in Kilifi County’s Mtwapa area, says the trade was anything but dignifying; the workers were always unsure of what the next man posing as a customer would turn out to be.

“The danger of contracting the HIV virus was ever real because I would sometimes get customers who never wanted to use condoms,” says Catherine.

She notes that in the trade, one would receive many clients some of whom she had never seen before yet many others well known to her.

Some of these men, she says, often turned violent. “He beats you up claiming that you have stolen money from him or just refuses to pay. And if you argue, the public sides with the man because of the suspicion with which commercial sex workers are viewed,” she states. With this kind of attitude, the man makes a twilight woman his property and uses her as he wishes because “he has paid”.

Nowhere to turn
She says there is nowhere commercial sex workers can voice their concerns because even the police are never too keen to hear their stories.

Agnes, also a former commercial sex worker, says prostitution is a murky business. But her greatest worry was how her children – who saw her as the perfect mother – could think of her if they found out what she did for a living.

The single mother of three’s next priority worry was contracting HIV/Aids. But the need for money to take care of herself and the children always made her go back to the activity.

Agnes recounts how on three different occasions she was raped by clients, respectable people in the society but whose HIV status she did not know. The violence meted on her is a typical example of what sex workers experience in the hands of men.

“In one instance, I was raped in a guest house in Ganjoni, Mombasa, by a man who then left me inside the room without any money even though he had a car. I had to have sex with the watchman there so I could get the fare back to Mtwapa,” confesses Agnes, her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

Then she has had near-death experiences. For example, one day a client raped her in his car and demanded to have anal sex. She refused and started screaming, forcing him to speed away.

Fearing for her life, Agnes jumped out of the moving car and sustained injuries. She spent the night in the bush until the following day when she got help.

In all these instances, she says, she would go for post-exposure prophylaxis just to rid her of any sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Involving men
At long last when these two women could not take any more from their ‘respectable’ clients, they quit through the help of a programme run by Solidarity with Women in Distress (Solwodi) Coast.

Solwodi targets areas with high sex work activities like Mtwapa, Ukunda and Mombasa town and works with the sex workers as well as male partners who get intimate with these women.

According to the chief executive, Maureen Karisa, this enables them to get to those at higher risk of contracting HIV.

Karisa says men who engage commercial sex workers have been left out in the fight against HIV/Aids as focus is more on the women. To reach the men, the organisation has many services such as moonlight VCTs and provision of condoms in areas frequented by this group.

Some of these areas are brothels, mnazi dens and strip clubs.

Says Karisa: “Members hold group therapy sessions where they talk with each other in a language they understand. In the process, they also discuss other ideas such as how to access microfinance services.”

Such sessions helped Catherine and Agnes choose new paths to walk. Catherine now sells green groceries in Mtwapa while Agnes runs a local pub in the same locality.

Agnes can now pay her children’s school fees without a worry and is proud to tell them what she does for a living, she says. Both women say they now have steady partners as opposed to before when they would go for any man as long as there was money.

Baghazal Anisa, the Coast Provincial assistant director of medical services, says many people look down upon sex workers yet those who demand the services are normal people in the society.

Says Anisa: “Gender-based violence recovery centres are open to offer help to every Kenyan regardless of who they are.”

The despicable gender violence during the 2007 election crisis

Untold violence was metted on women and families during the Post elections violence of 2007.  A lady in this story narates how she was raped by a law enforcer and how young boys mutilated her private parts. The civil society and faith organizations have to work hard to ensure that these horrors are not ever repeated in Kenya.

By Daily Nation 4th August 2012

The grim TV footage shows Nancy Wanjiru, 37, knee-deep in the murky waters of the Nairobi River at Bondeni village in Huruma slums, begging reluctant neighbours and police to help save her husband. Early that morning of January 3, 2008, at around 9.30 am, a group of marauding youths had stormed their house, disrupted their breakfast and dragged her husband George Gachie out, viciously attacking him with machetes and finally dumping him in the river, perhaps thinking he was dead.

As he was being bundled into a Red Cross ambulance, Mrs Gachie fell to her knees, and a sympathetic crowd gathered around her. She raised her hands, cast her gaze to the sky and wept: “God, what did I do to deserve this?” It was the fifth day since the presidential results of the December 27, 2007 General Election had unleashed unprecedented violence around the country, and it was spreading like bushfire. Ethnic-based madness reigned. Neighbours turned against one another; husbands deserted their wives for belonging to the “wrong” tribe, and law keepers turned violators.

That morning, Mrs Gachie, a mother of three, remembers her family’s breakfast being rudely interrupted by a group of rowdy youths she knew well. They warned the family to vacate the area before the day’s end. “I opened the door because I knew these young men very well. Most of them were my sons’ friends, and I never guessed they had bad motives,” she recounted to the Sunday Nation events of that fateful day. But the gods of madness that had taken over the youths could not be appeased by appeals of friendship. They attacked Nancy Wanjiru, and when her husband rose to her defence, they turned their anger on him.

He ran out, hotly pursued by the bloodthirsty youths. They attacked him savagely with machetes before dumping him in the dirty waters of the Nairobi River, most likely believing they had killed him. Meanwhile, a badly shaken Mrs Gachie slipped out of the house with her children and was given refuge by a neighbour. All the while, her husband was being attacked in the distance. After a while, the youths moved on to other targets and a neighbour ventured out of her house to inform Mrs Gachie that her husband had been killed. She decided to venture out to look for help. Miraculously, the man survived the assault despite extensive injuries, perhaps a testament to his incredible fighting spirit that even allows him to laugh about the incident today.

“I know the people who attacked me very well. In fact I can almost remember very clearly the one who landed the last cut on my head that knocked me out. I re-live that image every time I close my eyes to sleep,” he said. Mr Gachie, who operated a small electronics repair shop in Huruma before the incident, says he has met his assailants many times since then, although they have never exchanged a word. Two young men were arrested in connection with the attack but were released two days later without any charge. “The OCS told us that he had been ordered to release them by people who were in a position to get him fired. He told us there was little he could do and urged us to wait for God’s justice,” he said.

The same youths, he said, looted goods worth Sh180,000 from their house and a small salon they operated. They have since learnt from friends that one of them still has their TV set and a mattress. But had that been the end of the story, he reckons that they would have had an easier time coming to terms with the single incident.

But the tale of multiple horrors that followed has been too much to bear. His wife was raped early the next morning by a police officer who was also his friend. To compound her tribulations, Nancy Wanjiru was sexually assaulted the same day by the same youths who had struck the blow that knocked out her husband the previous day. She said the first sexual assault occurred early in the morning. She said the officer met her in Pangani walking to Kenyatta National Hospital to visit her husband and offered her a lift. However, the officer first took her to the Pangani police quarters where he stayed. “He offered me tea and bread. I had not eaten anything the previous day. I did not have shoes and he gave me slippers belonging to his wife who was away at the time,” she said. But the acts of kindness masked an insidious motive. Her benefactor quickly turned into her tormentor. “He told me ‘you Kikuyus are very bad people,’” she recalled. And, with that statement, the enforcer of the law turned its violater. As the officer forced himself on her, Mrs Gachie says he warned her against screaming for help, saying she would not get any because it was “my police station”. A scar on her right thigh she said was inflicted on her by the officer is a constant physical reminder of the cruel act that she said has forever changed her perceptions of men.

“I was shocked by what he did. He was a friend and a police officer. He had betrayed both bonds by one cruel act. I went away without a word after he finished. I have never been comfortable around men since,” she said. Both Mr Gachie and his wife said the officer was well known to them. “We were not close as such, but we interacted on a number of occasions as he made his rounds here. We were not strangers to one another,” Mr Gachie said.  His wife reported the incident at Pangani police station under OB48/10/1/8 and returned to a camp that had been set up for the internally displaced persons near Moi Airbase in Eastleigh for some quiet reflection.

It was while there that the second assault happened. She said that some time in the evening a group of armed youths descended on the IDPs. People scattered in different directions, and a young man, who she said was among the group that had attacked her husband, pursed her back into the slums where she ran. He pinned her down and attempted to rape her. When she fought back, he pulled out a knife from his pocket and cut her private parts and left her bleeding. “This was a friend of my son doing this to me.”

Rape is often used as a weapon during conflict, and the post-election violence was no exception. Nancy Wanjiru’s plight is easily the story of thousands of women abused during the post-election period. The Commission of Inquiry on the Post-Election Violence (Cipev) headed by Justice Philip Waki put the number of sexual offences at over 3,000. However, various independent organisations contend that the figure could be much higher. Only a handful of victims — 31 in all — were willing to share their experiences with the commission. Eighty-two per cent of victims never reported their ordeal to the police, the commission learnt.

The low turnout was attributed to a number of factors including fear of retaliation, fear of the police, failure to identify their tormentors and the believe that nothing would be done. The Waki Commission heard that the worst cases of sexual abuse occurred in Nairobi’s Kibera and Mathare slums, where hundreds of women and young girls were gang-raped by marauding youths and law enforcers. Ironically, when then Police Commissioner Brigadier Hussein Ali appeared before the commission, he stated that the police force had no statistics on sexual crimes because the force had not deemed it necessary to document them. The Waki report concludes that this cavalier attitude towards sexual crimes by the police was due to the fact that its officers were perpetrators of some of the crimes.

“It is the commission’s view that the involvement of state security agents in the perpetration of sexual violence and the fear of incriminating themselves may partly explain why the police omitted data on sexual violence in the reports they presented to the commission,” the report says. National outrage greeted the commission’s take on the police force’s apathy towards sexual crimes. First Lady Lucy Kibaki intervened and called for an immediate investigation into the crimes.

Reluctantly, the police formed an all-female taskforce headed by then Eastern Provincial Criminal Investigations Department boss Lilian Kiamba soon after the scathing criticism. But three years down the line, the task force’s findings are yet to be made public, and not a single person has been convicted of a sex-related crime.

The 3,000 plus victims, like Nancy Wanjiru, are still awaiting elusive justice. “With the exception of State House and the Prime Minister’s office, there is no door I have not knocked on in this town,” Wanjiru told the Sunday Nation. She has made several visits to Pangani police station to follow up on investigations into her case.

In 2010, a senior officer turned her away with a statement that has become a metaphor for the impunity in the post-election violence era and arguably the greatest stumbling block towards finding justice for victims. “He told me that the post-election violence was over and people had moved on to other things. I got very demoralised and thought of giving up. But I have just found myself waking up and paying more visits to people who might help me.” She said she has sought help from senior police officials and several human rights groups and non-governmental organisations. However, her case is yet to move forward.

In April, she paid a visit to police spokesman Eric Kiraithe accompanied by Mr Aloysius Njoroge Irubu of the St Teresa’s Peace Building Initiative, which has been working to bring peace in Mathare slums. Mr Kiraithe promised to follow up on the case, but she has heard nothing from him. Meanwhile, Nancy Wanjiru lives her live fearfully in the shadows of her tormentors. She says the officer who raped her has been using close family relatives to try to convince her to drop the matter.

In April, she said she ran into the officer at a public rally and an altercation ensued. “He grabbed me by the neck and told me to stop rejecting his overtures,” she said. Inquiries by the Sunday Nation established that the officer who allegedly raped Nancy Wanjiru is still in service at a police station in Embakasi constituency, Nairobi.

Nancy Wanjiru speaks for many victims of the violence when she says that the pursuit of justice has been frustratingly slow and fruitless. “Some time I think the whole justice thing is just unattainable.” Meanwhile, Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere said on Saturday that while he was not aware of Nancy Wanjiru Gachie’s case, police had done their best to investigate the complaints brought before them.

“What I have discovered is that there is a lot of witchhunt behind these allegations, but we have done our best to investigate nonetheless. We have even held identification parades in police stations, but most people failed to pinpoint their attackers,” he said. He said a number of people were prosecuted after the Waki task force completed its work although he could not give the exact figures at the time we called him because he was not in his office.

Commenting in In the Shadow of Death: My Trauma, my experience, a book documenting women’s experiences in the post-election violence, lawyer Moses Otsieno explains: “The Sexual Offences Act, though fundamental, has major weaknesses in the sense that it leaves out some key offences. It neither recognises that sexual abuses performed during a period of political chaos are genocidal or war crimes which, therefore, means that cases of this nature cannot be tried under this Act.”

Legal experts say various avenues of seeking redress will need to be explored to assist survivors of sexual violence, who hold scant evidence against their perpetrators. Mr Otsieno agrees: “The longer these cases take, the lesser the chances for justice to be done. With time, people forget details, memory fails, files and important documents may be misplaced.”

 

Read about the effects of colonialism on African women here

Man jailed for life for defiling his 9 year daughter

East African Standard online  1st August 2012

A father of ten has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Naivasha court after he was found guilty of defiling his nine-year-old daughter.

Moses Kamau Ndungiere, 47, was left tongue-tied after the ruling by Naivasha Principal Magistrate Esther Boke.

In her ruling, the magistrate termed the act as evil, adding that a deterrent sentence was needed to prevent such incidents.

According to the magistrate, medical reports adduced in court indicated that the minor had been sexually abused.

Kamau had been charged that on the September 27 and October 2, 2011, he defiled the minor in Mafuta Taa village in Mai Mahiu.

The accused, who was unrepresented faced an alternative charge of indecently assaulting the minor by touching her private parts.

Earlier, the girl told the court how her father arrived home armed with an axe and defiled her several times. The minor said that the father, who works in a quarry, threatened her with death if she told anybody about the incident.

In mitigation, the accused pleaded for leniency, saying he was the sole breadwinner of the family and his aged parents relied on him. He was given 14 days to appeal.

Triumphant Recovery from Addiction to Sex and Alcohol: Inspirational!

By Daily Nation 24th July 2012

Not many people would be courageous enough to freely talk about their tainted past, especially if this past has to do with alcoholism and sex addiction, taboo subjects in our society. And yet 32-year-old Titus Ndiritu has done exactly this.

His troubling past is recorded in his memoirs, What I Never Told You: Memoirs of a Recovering Addict, a book that is a must-read for parents who have to leave their children in the care of house helps while they are at work.

Ndiritu’s is a heart-wrenching account of a little boy who is introduced to sex at the tender age of seven, but is too ashamed and scared to tell his parents, both teachers, about the abuse.

It began in 1987 following the arrival of a new house help. She would make him fondle her inappropriately, as she did the same to him. And if, as happened during the first encounter, someone walked in on them, she would spank him to make it appear as if she was punishing him for some wrong-doing.

“She always abused me behind a mask of kindness, always encouraging me to touch her first, as if it were my idea. Though it was terrifying, it made me feel special…it made me feel pleasure,” Ndiritu writes in his book.

Ndiritu and his five siblings were usually left in the care of a house help, since his parents went to work.

“Maybe if we spent sufficient time with each other, they would have observed the change in me. If they had asked me, I would have told them,” he says.

What the househelp did to him —undressing him and fondling his genitals or having him look at her as she bathed or dressed — gradually hooked him to something he had no business experiencing at that age.

By the time she left 15 months later, the damage had been done. Ndiritu would re-enact what the househelp had taught him with the young neighbourhood girls. Somehow, his actions went unnoticed.

He had his first sexual experience at 15 years, while in form two, with a student he met during the schools drama festival. From then on, there was no stopping him.

“I developed an uncontrollable sexual urge. Anytime I saw an attractive girl, I wanted to have sex with her. If I couldn’t, I would masturbate,” he says.

By the time he completed secondary school, he had started to sleep with multiple partners, mostly girls at his school and those he went to church with.

But his sexual encounters always left him feeling ashamed, such that when a couple of his classmates introduced him to cigarettes, bhang and alcohol in form one; he gladly embraced the drugs, the alcohol especially, when he found out that it numbed his conscience.

“Although the drinking started in small doses, by the time he completed secondary school, Ndiritu had become a heavy drinker.

The first sign of trouble emerged in 2001, when he decided to drop out of college. He was studying accounts at the Kenya College of Accountancy, and had just two more sections to go to become a Certified Public Account.

“It wasn’t for lack of school fees, that much I can tell you,” he comments.

Soon afterwards, he got a job as a school bursar in 2003, only to be dismissed a year later due to heavy drinking. All the while, he’d have casual sex, sometimes unprotected, and then he’d drown the shame in alcohol. When he lost this job, he went into rehab, determined to cure his addiction to alcohol.

“I never thought, not once, that my preoccupation with sex was a disease,” he says.

After he got out of rehab, he got a teaching job at an accountancy college in Nanyuki. But he couldn’t keep away from the alcohol, and a year later, he lost his job. Desperate, he took the next one that came along – stock-taking in a bar. Predictably, his drinking got worse, and taking advantage of his vulnerability, the owner would pay him with “cheap spirits” instead of money.

“I sold everything I owned; I was kicked out of my rented house, and with nowhere to go, I begun to sleep in the streets,” he says, adding that he was no different from a street boy.

He would take any job that came his way, and whatever money he made, he sunk it all into alcohol.

“This was the worst period in my life,” says Ndiritu.

News of his desperate state reached his sister, a teacher, who alerted their father. The family speedily arranged for his second rehab. He was 25 years then. But even this did not work.

Upon discharge a few months later, Ndiritu got into a relationship with a woman, who, at 49, was old enough to be his mother.

He would go through two more rehab centres before he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Nairobi. But he relapsed into alcoholism…again. It was only after admission to another psychiatric hospital that the root of his alcoholism were traced to sex addiction, a discovery that turned out to be his saving grace.

He learnt that there was a pattern to his drinking, in that when he was sober, he sought sex, and as soon as he was done, he turned to alcohol to try and forget the shameful memories. The doctor who detected this pattern to his sex-alcohol addiction attributed his sex addiction to his childhood encounter with the househelp who abused him.

“When I was not drunk, I was always looking for women to have sex with. I did not bother with protection, and not even HIV scared me,” he says, and adds,

“Initially, I looked for ‘nice girls’ in church, but later, I turned to commercial sex workers.”

An active church member, a youth leader and a chief campaigner of True Love Waits, “I quickly learned a secret that many religious people keep to themselves; the holier you act, the more sex you get,” writes Ndiritu, who had sexual partners in all the surrounding churches.

To ensure that he had his way, he didn’t keep chairs in his room, to ensure that any girl who visited sat on his bed. He also kept a pail of water in the room into which he threatened to immerse the girl’s clothes if she declined his advances.

If the threats failed, he used force.

“In reality, that was rape—the kind of rape that goes unreported,” he admits.

At one point, Ndiritu would have three sex encounters in a day, or “eight-to-ten women in a week” on average. When it got to a point where he no longer derived satisfaction from physical sex, he went into exhibitionism, voyeurism, and grabbing women.

The only near-normal relationship he had resulted in the birth of a daughter. The mother was a fellow student at the Kenya College of Accountancy, but the relationship was brief because of his heavy drinking and wandering eye.

“I often wonder what my life would be like had the root cause of my alcohol addiction not been detected – I am very fortunate.”

Ndiritu had his last bottle of alcohol in 2008, just before his last rehabilitation in 2008. Since then, he says, he has never touched a drop of alcohol, and has learnt to control his once uncontrollable sexual urge.

However, he admits that he is not yet ready to give a “normal relationship” a chance.

He explains:

“Because of where I am coming from, I know so much about sex, but little about intimacy. My greatest fear is that if today I’d get into a relationship, I would find myself walking out of it as soon as we got intimate.”

Ndiritu often gives talks to schools and churches on the twin addictions he knows intimately, and does not hesitate to use his experience.

Three years ago, he also reached out to his daughter, who is now 11 years old, and in class six.

“I am fortunate that I was able to form a relationship with her, and that her mother did not object to me reaching out – nothing gives me greater joy than being a father,” he says.

He is a parent in every sense – he pays her school fees and provides for all her other needs, material and emotional.

“She lives with me most of the time,” Ndiritu says. His daughter’s mother is married.

Ndiritu, who is a trainer at Support for Addiction Prevention and Treatment in Africa, SAPTA, is a final-year counselling psychology student at the Africa Nazarene University. His career choice, he says, was influenced by his experiences.

With the advantage of practical experience, he advises: “As parents, we should form a close relationship with our children, because this way, we’ll be able to tell if something is amiss, and our children will be confident enough to confide in us.

You can contact Titus on 0736 664 394/ 0717 607 383 or tittos10@yahoo.com

Life sentence for a child defiler in Nyeri

Story by East Africa Standard Online 10th July 2012

A middle aged Nyeri farmer will remain behind bars for the rest of his life for defiling his neighbour’s eight-year-old daughter.

James Mahinda Wambugu buried his face in his palms when Nyeri Chief Magistrate Wilbroda Juma handed him the death sentence.

The offence was committed on December 20, 2010 at Kiandu village on the outskirts of Nyeri town in Tetu district.

The magistrate who listened to his case said she was convinced beyond doubt that the farmer lured the girl to the coffee plantation on the pretext that she was to pick some cattle fodder.

But the man grabbed the girl who was alone with her three siblings at home when she followed her into the coffee bush, tore off her clothes and lay her on the sack she was to put the fodder in.

Mrs Jumas said the Sexual Offences Act, 2006 provides for a mandatory life sentence for defilement of minors below 11 years.

“You were supposed to be a protector of the child but you turned against her. You are given a life sentence as the law provides,” said the magistrate.

The trail magistrate said the prosecution had proved the case against the accused beyond any reasonable doubt and that it appeared the accused had taken advantage of the absence of the complainant’s mother to exploit the innocent child.

The court also noted that the defence failed to challenge the allegation of defilement of the minor and that the complainant gave a graphic description which was clear and consistent.

“She knows the accused well as a neighbour… at eight years of age, I see no reason why the complainant would have given false testimony against him,” said the magistrate.

23 Year Old Man Defiles Old Women Aged Over 80

East African Standard Wednesday, May 23 2012

A village in Kinangop, Nyandarua County is in shock after a middle-aged man defiled two grannies aged over 80 years in one night. The 23-year-old labourer escaped lynching by a whisker moments after the abuse in Karandi village in Njabini area.  In what appeared to be a horror, the suspect attacked the grannies aged 84 and 86 years old as they slept sexually abusing them for hours.

And as fate would have it, the suspect who was under the influence alcohol slept in one of the victims house where he was found naked. Drama started when the labourer who has since been arrested raided the home of the 84-year-old woman. According to a relative Hannah Njambi, the suspect broke into the house at around 12am and entered through the window. “The granny heard commotion and tried to enquire who was in the house but she was held by the throat and pulled out of the bed,”

Njambi narrated how the granny was sexually abused before she managed to scream and relatives respond to the distress call. The accused escaped using the cover of darkness to a nearby home where he again broke the room and found the 86-year-old asleep. He again took over three hours abusing the granny before falling asleep.

According to a witness Bernard Theuri, the granny informed the relatives who cornered the suspect seriously beating him before police arrived. “We are made to understand that the suspect smokes bhang and maybe this is the reason as to why he committed the act,” The superintendent in charge of Naivasha district hospital Dr Joseph Mburu, where the duo were brought for treatment, termed their condition as stable.

Man Prostitutes 10 Year Old Boys

The Citizen Saturday, 17 March 2012

A 10-year-old boy shook when asked about being prostituted to two other men by an adoptive father who regularly had sex with him, according to police, who said the boy was fearful of talking because he didn’t want to be taken from his home or separated from his new siblings.

The adoptive father has been charged with raping three boys in his care and compelling prostitution by hiring the 10-year-old out for sex. He and two other men remained in jail on rape charges.
Federal and local law enforcement officials said they’re widening the investigation into child sexual exploitation allegations against the father, who worked out of his home as an insurance claims adjuster. His name is being withheld to protect the children’s identities.

Troy police said they impounded the father’s truck and seized four laptops from the home and a video camera and two wooden paddles from the master bedroom.

School officials said the man had recently withdrawn the three adopted children from school, saying he would home school them. A neighbour said he had no idea anything lurid might be going on in the home.

“You don’t know what goes on inside people’s homes,” said neighbour Ed Rogers, who had lived across the street from the man the past five years in a neighborhood lined with single-story ranch homes, typical in this working class city of 25,000 people about 20 miles north of Dayton. “I’ll never look at that house the same way again. I’ll just look at it with sickness.”

The man at the center of the investigation is a longtime Troy resident who had been involved in a local youth basketball programme. Police Capt. Chris Anderson said police so far haven’t found any signs of any inappropriate behavior with other children, even as calls poured in from worried parents.

“Shock and disbelief,” Anderson said of the community’s reaction.
Rogers and his wife, Sherry, said the man was something of a loner but would chit-chat when out mowing his lawn or when the kids were playing outside. Sherry Rogers recalled the day that his blinds were usually drawn shut at his home, a few blocks from an elementary school.

Police said they hadn’t found any records of past criminal charges against the man. He had adopted three children, including a 9-year-old girl, and was in the processing of adopting the fourth who lived with him.

The children came from Texas, where state officials said Thursday they have been reviewing their records but had found nothing out of the ordinary or outside of procedures, which include background checks, and parental training.
“We’re sick about the results, but it’s not that the process was not followed,” said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Texas family services agency. “This appears to be a tragic but isolated incident.”

Ohio children’s services officials said they were also reviewing the adoptions, handled through a private agency certified by the state. Ohio spokesman Ben Johnson said the adoptive father was first certified as a foster parent in Miami County in 2005. He said Ohio and Texas officials were in communication about the case.

The case comes as Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Attorney General Mike DeWine have made investigating human trafficking and exploitation of minors a priority. “This is a horrible situation,” DeWine said. “It’s always shocking whenever you have children who are abused, and when children are sexually abused … this is so reprehensible.”

An undercover detective in Franklin County, part of a state task force, talked online with the adoptive father, who said he would arrange sex with a 10-year-old boy, Troy police said. He had been led to the adoptive father by another man who had posted a Craigslist ad wanting “taboo” sex, police said.

The adoptive father was going to meet the undercover detective at a McDonald’s in a nearby city, but police moved in two days before the scheduled meeting, according to records. They confronted the man with text messages and online communications about arranging sex with the boy, police said in a case report filed in court.

Federal and state prosecutors and investigators and police from three Ohio cities were meeting to discuss how to proceed. The FBI said it was pursuing federal sexual exploitation charges.(Agencies)

Stiffer Laws Called for Against Rapists

From Nation 17th May 2012

Women MPs on Thursday called on the government to put in place stringent measures to safeguard women against rape and domestic violence.

Nominated MP Rachel Shebesh said at the launch of the international campaign to stop rape and gender violence in Nairobi that Kenya Women Parliamentarians Association was working to ensure laws against rape were fully implemented.

She said the fight against the vices would only succeed if the Judiciary acted on pending cases promptly and imposed heavy penalties.

The director of the Greenbelt Movement, the organisers of the event, Prof Njoroge Karanja, called on the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Keriako Tobiko, to ensure that 4,500 rape cases filed during the 2007/08 post-election violence were prosecuted.

“A taskforce is already at work to establish whether the law against rape is being observed because the implementation on ground has been a major issue,” he said.

This comes after the Economic Survey 2012 revealed that defilement and rape topped the category of offences last year.

According to the survey report released on Tuesday, 3,352 cases of defilement and 1,051 rape cases were reported last year, a 19.4 per cent and 50.4 per cent increase, respectively, compared to 2010.

A walk against rape will be flagged off this morning at the Freedom Corner, in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park.