How safe are your kids from sexual abuse while you are away at work?

Cases of defilement are on the rise, but children’s officers say it is difficult to pursue the few that make it to court to their logical conclusion due to legal technicalities or because parents opt out and seek alternative settlement. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Cases of defilement are on the rise, but children’s officers say it is difficult to pursue the few that make it to court to their logical conclusion due to legal technicalities or because parents opt out and seek alternative settlement.
  • hildren’s officers attribute the rise in defilement to a number of factors, especially the busy lifestyle many parents lead, which leaves them little time to know what their children are doing, ignorance, poverty and an ‘immoral’ society.
  • It is not only girls who are defiled; the number of boys being sodomised in the area is equally alarming, said Mr Maina.  About 14 sodomy cases have been reported in the area, all perpetrated by one man, he added.

It was around 5.30am on September 1, 2013, and Ms Elsa Nafula* had just arrived in Nairobi from upcountry with her eight-year-old daughter, Alice*, and five-year-old son, Brian*. At that early morning hour, they were hunched at the bus stop near their house in the Kanuku-Kinyango neighbourhood of Biafra in Kamukunji, Nairobi.

Although it was quiet and still dark, except for few movements by early risers, Nafula was not worried about leaving the children alone at the bus stop as she dashed to the house to get someone to help her carry the stuff she had brought from the village. After all, she had lived in the area for 25 years and knew most of the people around.

“I felt at home when a young man I knew appeared as I was heading to the house and we exchanged greetings,” she recalled recently.

But upon her return to the bus stop, her children were nowhere to be found.

“I had ordered the children to wait for me as I dashed to the house to call their brother, so I was shocked when I returned to the spot where I had left them to find them missing,” said the 45-year-old single mother.

“I was so shocked that I started screaming. Sympathisers responded to my distress calls and we started looking for the children.”

However, she suspected the young man because he was the one around when she left. By the time the search team found the children a short distance away, her only daughter, Alice, had been defiled.

“She had been violated and was bleeding; he destroyed my daughter,” lamented Ms Nafula.

It turned out that the suspect had  whipped out a gun and threatened young Brian with it, telling the little boy that he would kill him if he told anyone about what he had just witnessed.

“He told him he would kill them if they breathed a word to anyone about what he had happened,” Ms Nafula narrated.

FOREVER TRAUMATISED

Above: A section of Biafra Estate in Nairobi, where children are often sexually abused. PHOTO | ANTHONY OMUYA

It was then  that the search team arrived at the scene. However, the suspect, sensing danger, jumped over a fence and melted into the expansive slum. But after a major search, he was smoked out of his hideout by the angry residents and taken to the Shauri Moyo Police Station, from where he was later charged in a Nairobi court.

Alice was taken to hospital, where she was treated and counselled. Now 10, she still goes for counselling, but the ghosts of the traumatising incident continue to haunt her. 

When DN2 visited her at home last week, she was very uneasy and abandoned the washing to go and hide when she saw the two men in the team. 

Her mother says she is still traumatised, two years after the incident. “We have not known peace in this house. The children were affected mentally,” said Ms Nafula, a casual labourer.

Alice cannot go anywhere unaccompanied. “I cannot send her anywhere, and she runs and hides whenever she sees a man approaching. She cannot go to the shop and the few times she has tried, she has ended up losing the money,” says Ms Nafula.

So Ms Nafula has to escort her daughter to and from school, even when there are other children using  the same route.  Alice gets frightened whenever she approaches the place where she was defiled and has to be accompanied to cross the area.

“She screams at night and sleeps in snatches because images of her defiler keep haunting her,” added her mother.

Alice still complains of pain in her back and private parts, which make walking difficult, a situation that greatly distresses her mother. 

Ms Nafula hopes that one day she will have enough money to enable her to move to a better place for the sake of her children. 

According to Ms Margaret Kagwiria, a Kamukunji-based children’s officer, rape and defilement are rampant in the Kanuku-Kinyago slum.

On the morning of June 16, 2015, for instance, a little girl we shall call Jane had a narrow escape when her father saved her from an attacker a few metres from Ms Nafula’s house. The incident took place in an abandoned building next to their house at around 9am.

“I first saw his shoes as I approached the building. I asked him what he was doing there. I did not notice that he was lying on top of my daughter,” recalled the girl’s father, whom we shall call John.

She could have suffocated, let alone been defiled, said John when he spoke to DN2.

Taken by surprise, the would-be defiler quickly got up to button up his trousers, and that was when John saw his daughter sprawled on the floor. He grabbed the man and tried to rain blows on him but the man proved too strong and after a brief struggle, managed to escape.

However, he was later apprehended by residents and taken to Shauri Moyo Police Station, while the young girl was taken for treatment.

The suspect was charged with attempted defilement, and  the case is still pending in a Nairobi court.

The incident left the girl very disturbed,  her father said. “The courts should give such people the maximum sentence or stiffer penalties,” he said.

BOYS AT RISK

Left: A general view of Biafra Estate, where defilement is rampant, according to a children’s officer based in the area. PHOTO | ANTHONY OMUYA

A few months ago, a three-year-old girl was defiled and infected with HIV in the area, a volunteer children’s officer (VCO), Mr Kennedy Maina, said last week.

However, the case was withdrawn after the girl’s mother recanted the statement she had made at the police station after, it is suspected, being bribed by the suspect. 

She then moved from the area, “The last time I heard of the girl, she was somewhere near the Kenya-Tanzania border with her mother,” said Ms Kagwiria.

According to another VCO, Ms Mary Mugwe, it was the third time the little girl had been defiled by someone known to her mother.

“It is so hard to get justice in such a case because there is no victim or complainant to appear in court. As a result, many defilement victims do not get justice,” says Ms Mugwe.

After incessant reports of defilement in the area, about 200 minors demonstrated in Eastleigh more than a month ago in an attempt to make their voices heard by the local administration.

The girls and boys from the Kanuku-Kinyago slums carried placards bearing the writings “Tumechoka kubakwa (We are tired of being defiled)” and marched to the Kamukunji deputy commissioner’s office in Pumwani.

It is not only girls who are defiled; the number of boys being sodomised in the area is equally alarming, said Mr Maina.  About 14 sodomy cases have been reported in the area, all perpetrated by one man, he added.

Cases such as the ones cited above, in which the defilers were known to the victims and the community, are on the increase, said children’s officer Michael Opondo.

He recalled a case he handled in July this year, in which a 12-year-old girl was defiled by her father in Kawangware.

“The minor was left with him after he and her mother separated a few months earlier,” Mr Opondo said, adding that cases of incest were on the increase in Nairobi.

Despite the punitive measures that were put in place to punish sex offenders, most cases are never conclusively concluded because parents either withdraw them after being compromised or as a result of other technicalities, says  Mr Opondo.

He adds that most defilement incidents go unreported, and  that the numbers could be much higher than those reported. This is because it has become “normal” for families to seek out-of-court settlements.

According to Mr Opondo, retrogressive cultures and increases in divorce and separation are partly to blame for the increased cases of defilement, especially in urban slums.

He cited a case in which a boy was sodomised in Dandora a few months ago. The incident was reported at the Kinyago Police Station but after recording a statement, his mother withdraw the case after she was “paid Sh30,000” by the alleged defiler.

“They are given as little as Sh3,000 to withdraw  the cases, effectively denying justice to the victims. I don’t know what these parents discuss with the defilers,” said Ms Kagwiria.

“Sex pests are capitalising on ignorance and poverty in most of the affected communities, said Mr Opondo, who also rescues girls at risk through his Network for Children at Risk, a non-governmental organisation.

His sentiments were echoed by other children’s officers, who said the cases have increased because children are now more vulnerable as a result of the busy lifestyles of their parents, who have little time to supervise them.

HOSTILE PARENTS

According Ms Saumu Saidi, a VCO in Eastleigh, the cases have increased gradually because of absentee parents, poverty and an “immoral” society.

She said that children as young as five years are being taught sex through pornographic videos by adults in some parts of Kamukunji.

“I once confronted a woman doing this. She became just as hostile as the parents were when  I told them what was going on,” said Ms Saidi.

She further claimed  that older children are given money to engage in sex while the young ones are given sweets to watch  pornographic material.

“Parents leave very early to go work and return home late. They are not aware of what happens to their children during the day. It has also been fuelled by poverty,” said Ms Saumu, adding that very young girls have been introduced to prostitution in the area.

“There are parents trading their children in prostitution, and when confronted, they become hostile,” said the officer.

Such cases are common, not just in Kamukunji,  but also in other slums  like Mathare, Kibera, Ngomongo, as well as in some estates like Dandora, said Mr Opondo.

The punishment for sex offenders is severe under Kenyan law and ranges from 10 years in jail to life imprisonment.

But, according to John, life imprisonment for defilers is too lenient; he says they should be hanged.

As for Alice, her hope is that time will push the terrible incident to the recesses of her mind  so that she can find peace.

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ALARMING STATISTICS

Child sex abuse rises as general crime subsides

STATISTICS FROM the police department indicate that out of 11 counties at the Coast, in central Kenya and Nairobi, the city is among the counties with high defilement cases.

The data shows that between January 2014 and September 2015, 561 cases were reported in the county, with 513 cases pending before the courts (PBC).

At least 2,500 cases of defilement were reported in the 11 counties during the same period. Of these, 2,100 cases are pending before the courts.

In Nairobi, 17 defilement cases cannot be prosecuted because the alleged defilers went into hiding. Three cases are currently under investigation, while 13 have been withdrawn. Only seven suspects have been convicted while two cases were expunged during the same period.

There are many cases pending before the courts at the Coast (930) against a total of 1,101 defilement cases. In Mombasa, there were 235 cases before courts at the end of September 2015. Kilifi had 339 cases, Kwale 189, Lamu three, Tana River 60, and Taita Taveta 74.

During the same period,  there were 926 defilement cases in central Kenya, of which 728 were pending before the courts. In Nyeri, there were 123 cases pending before court, Nyandarua 136, Kirinyaga 57, Murang’a 154 and Kiambu 258.

A research recently conducted by IPAS Africa Alliance indicated that Vihiga County was one of the areas with high numbers of defilement cases in 2014. At least five defilement cases are reported every day in the county, meaning more than 1,820 cases are reported every year. 

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga also recently announced that cases of defilement and rape had increased significantly in the country, adding that at least 6,000 had been brought before the courts in 2014.

This was corroborated by information recently released by the police indicating that, while general crime in the country had gone down by 16 per cent since 2011, defilement and rape cases had risen by five per cent.