The ugly face of domestic violence

Even as Caroline Kemunto’s agonised screams rent the air on the night of June 8, her neighbours in Iranda Village in Kisii County did not bother to respond to her cries of distress. Half an hour later, the 28-year-old mother of one lay dead in a pool of blood, bludgeoned to death by her husband. He was later arrested and charged with her death.

Four days later, Ms Winfrida Kwamboka, narrowly escaped a similar fate. Ms Kwamboka was in her one-room house in Mogonga Market when she heard a knock on the door. Upon answering it, she came face to face with her estranged husband, from whom she had fled a month earlier because he frequently beat her.

“After a series of particularly bad beatings, I realised he meant it and ran away. That day I had visited my children at our marital home in Moshocho, Kitutu Chache Sub-county. As I was leaving, I saw some people following me on a motorbike but didn’t think much of it,” recalled the mother of seven.

Now the sight of her husband at the door sent her heart pounding when she realised that the people she had seen on motorbikes earlier had been trailing her.

“He quickly reached into his jacket and drew a machete,” she recalled. “I screamed and instinctively dashed past him.”

But the 40-year-old fruit seller’s husband had anticipated such a move.

“I found my path blocked by two men, also wielding machetes. They forced me back into the house,” Ms Kwamboka said.

Back in the house, her husband attacked her viciously, fracturing her right arm and slashing her several times on the legs and right arm.

Luckily, her neighbours responded to her screams and came to her rescue.

“He tried to fight them but there were too many of them, so he ran away after scaring them off with his machete,” Ms Kwamboka said.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital, Dr Enoch Ondari, termed it “one of the worst incidents of gender-based violence our hospital has ever handled”.

Three days later, Ms Kwamboka’s husband showed up at the hospital during visiting hours.

“He came up to my bed and quietly threatened me with dire consequences if I reported the matter to the authorities,” she said.

The police were informed of the attack and the subsequent visit and are looking for the suspect, but he has fled his home and is in hiding.

Then on June 14, Ms Rebecca Kwamboka was going to a shop next to her newly rented Bridge Camp, Nyamataro, home when someone lunged at her from a bush outside her home. He slashed her several times, severing three fingers from her right hand.

When the DN2 visited her in the ward at Level 6 Hospital, she was still in shock from the pain and trauma.

EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE

The 27-year-old mother of three said she could not identify her attacker because she did not know him. “I had never seen him before,” she said.

Interestingly, Ms Margaret Mogaka, a nurse who was present when Ms Moraa’ was admitted, said the patient had made a report in which she had named her estranged husband as the assailant.

“That means he is still free to harm other women should he decide to marry someone else,” the nurse said.

Ms Mogaka revealed that survivors often also get rid of bloodstained clothes and other items that could provide forensic evidence to be used against the perpetrators in court.

“So we are have cases that lack crucial evidence to allow the state to prove the guilt of the assailants,” she lamented.

Another doctor at the ward who asked not to be named said the increase in violent attacks were worrying. “We are receiving an average of three cases of domestic violence in our ward every week. It is a silent catastrophe that no one wants to tackle publicly,” he said.

Despite the Sexual Offences Act prohibiting out-of-court settlement for sex-related cases, most families seek the intervention by community elders, which tend to shield the perpetrators, to the  disadvantage of the victims.

Some victims get P3 Forms, not with the intention of pressing charges against the aggressors, but  instead use them  to blackmail the offenders to compensate them, usually in the form of a few animals or cash.

Meanwhile, widespread cover-up of female genital mutilation is the norm in the region, where it is a time-honoured cultural rite of passage.

Discussion of the subject in the county assembly is shunned since ward representatives opposed to FGM risk being bundled out by voters.

It is notable that none of the 31 bills so far passed by the Kisii County Assembly have touched on GBV, FGM or any of the nine Acts that protect women and children from violence.

The recent increase in gender-based violence cases in Kisii and Nyamira counties has prompted a small but active group to take action to ensure the culprits are punished.

Nominated MCA Risper Kemunto of the Orange Democatic Movement, who heads the Vinbel Foundation, an NGO dedicated to ending the gender-based violence in the region, concurs with the Kisii Level 6 medic: “It is the silent scourge that preachers avoid. Politicians, both male and female, also steer clear of the topic. Entertainers and opinion leaders have plenty to say on other matters but are mute when it comes to violence in the home,” she says.

She has spearheaded a campaign that has seen the arrest and successful prosecution of more than 50 perpetrators of the vice in the two counties. “It is a small but steady effort. We hope to achieve even more as more victims speak out and identify their attackers,” she says.

Anti-gender-based violence activist and Ong’icha Primary School teacher Eric Kiriama said the vice had reached epidemic levels. “We are trying our best to sensitise the public to the dangers of gender-based violence and what to do when it occurs,” he told DN2.

He has brought together a group of teachers who go round the county educating schoolchildren on how to protect themselves from gender-based violence.

“We are currently expanding our information network to include county and national government administrators at the ward level,” Mr Kiriama said.

________ 

FYI

• Sexual Offences Act,
• Counter-Trafficking of Persons Act,
• Anti-FGM Act
• Children’s Act
• Family Protection Act
• Domestic Violence Bill 2014
• Penal Code

********** 

Ignorance a major problem in fighting vice

DURING A gender-based violence workshop for police officers in Kisii earlier this month,  Mr Joe Muriithi of the Gender Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC) said most Kenyans in the rural areas are unaware of the laws that have been enacted to deal with the vice.

“We have the Sexual Offences, the Counter-Trafficking of Persons, Anti-FGM, Children’s, and Family Protection acts as well as the Domestic Violence Bill 2014 and the Penal Code, which collectively criminalise and prescribe legal penalties for gender-based violence,” he said.

Mr Muriithi stressed the need for citizens to be empowered through barazas, church gatherings, political rallies and other public forums.

Mr John Chege, the director of the GVRC, a charitable trust of the Nairobi Women’s Hospital, said the facility had treated more than 32,000 cases of gender-based violence since it was established in 2001.

He said research by the centre showed that it costs an average of Sh56,000 to treat a single case of gender-based violence. That comes to Sh392,000 per week, and to more than Sh20.3 million annually.

The research further found that 37 per cent of the survivors are assaulted by their husbands,16 per cent by their boyfriends, 13 per cent by their girlfriends and 23 per cent by their former husbands.

Mr Chege said that women are the major victims of gender-based violence: “Forty-five  per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence., with the percentage even higher in the case of verbal violence in the form of threats and abuse,” he said.

“Many survivors are at the mercy of the perpetrators when they go back home after being treated. This exposes them to further attacks, and possibly even death in the long run,” he said.

Mr Chege said lack of state-sponsored shelters for victims of abuse was one of the greatest impediments to full recovery for the victims.

“Most victims, especially unemployed wives, are forced to go back to the homes where the violence occurred. They sometimes do this with the mistaken notion that their abusive spouses will change, or that the events will come to an end. Sadly, this mostly never happens,” he says.

Ms Esnas Nyaramba, an Amani Coalition  branch official and chair of the Young Women Democrats,  said that the community has long been used to domestic violence.

“People are used to the idea of a man beating his wife. They choose not to interfere; some even see it a man disciplining his spouse,” she said.

Kisii County Police Commander Ms Agnes Mudamba said that the police were concerned about the increasing cases of domestic violence in the county, adding that the tendency by women to report cases of violence and then withdrawing them was worrying.

 “Women are usually very willing to name their attackers when they are brought to hospital in pain, but they withdraw the cases a few days later, saying the man is the father of their children. A woman will even claim that she cannot risk being cursed by the community for ensuring that her violent husband is arrested and jailed for his crime,” she said.

“Such cases are very sensitive and we proceed with caution since the women eventually drop the charges against their husbands due to pressure from their families,” she said. “Cases of domestic violence become more dangerous if left unsolved. In most cases, they lead to murder.”

Ms Mudamba said that women should allow the law enforcement agencies to follow the cases to their logical conclusion.“Women should not suffer in silence or withdraw cases due to pressure from relatives. This will ensure that the perpetrators are taught a lesson,” the county police boss said.

She said that there is a need for women in the county to be informed of their rights through the media, adding that vernacular radio stations were particularly appropriate for empowering men and women at the grassroots level.

“Vernacular radio stations can do a lot to educate men and women to discard harmful cultural practices, including those that allow men to beat their wives,” she said. “Women should realise that it is not the right for their husbands to threaten or beat them. They are protected by the Constitution of Kenya, which protects the individual’s right to life.”

 Meanwhile, Dr Enoch Ondari, CEO of the Kisii Level 5 Hospital, which has handled 217 cases of GBV since June last year, said it was  setting up a Gender Violence Recovery Centre for survivors. The centre is expected to start operating within a month.

The county police boss added that women should seek legal protection.