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Where is the training, by force if necessary, for the male police
officers and magistrates?
----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, October 27, 2005 4:25 pm
Subject: KENYA: Sexual and domestic violence prevalent
> ** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
>
> This tragedy in our societies should no longer be ignored. There
> are real victims!
>
> - Wilmot
>
>
> Nairobi, 10/27/2005 (IRIN) - Sexual violence is increasingly
> prevalent in Kenya and police statistics show that more than 2,800
> cases of rape were reported in 2004 - an increase of close to 500
> compared to the previous year.
>
> Domestic violence is also a serious problem in the East African
> nation. A demographic health survey carried out by the Ministry of
> Planning in 2003 revealed that at least half of all Kenyan women
> had experienced violence since the age of 15, with close family
> members among the perpetrators.
>
> The chilling statistics, however, do not tell the full story of the
> emotional devastation of individual rape victims. Take the case of
> a woman in her early twenties we shall call Rachael.
>
> She recalls the evening of 13 February with horror. As she walked
> the short distance between the bus stop and her home in Nairobi's
> impoverished Eastlands, four men brutally and repeatedly gang raped
> her.
> "One man grabbed me and showed me a large knife. He said if I
> screamed, he would kill me. They dragged me to a nearby bush and
> each of the men raped me. Then three of them left me with the one
> who had grabbed me first. He kept me there for two hours and
> continued raping me."
>
> <b>Memory blackouts</b>
>
> After the attack, Rachael found her way to a friend's home nearby
> where she related the harrowing story. "I was in a daze at the
> time. Thankfully, my friends were thinking more clearly - they gave
> me 400 shillings [US $5.45], which I used to get to the Nairobi
> Women's Hospital," she recalls.
>
> "After my rape, my only thought was that I should commit suicide,
> my life was over," Mary, another survivor of rape, told IRIN at the
> Nairobi Women's Hospital where she is a patient.
>
> She had been attacked in the pre-dawn hours of 15 January as she
> made her way from her home in Dandora, another slum area in
> Nairobi, to Jomo Kenyatta international Airport, where she works as
> a casual labourer.
>
> "After the rape, I was having memory blackouts and thought I was
> abnormal. But through counselling, I discovered that it is common
> and there is nothing wrong with me."
>
> Following her attack, the only person Mary confided in was her
> sister. She was too afraid of being stigmatised to tell anyone else
> in her family.
>
> "What if the rapist had made me pregnant or had given me HIV, who
> would believe it was because of rape?. When I went to the police, I
> was asked to tell my story in public. They did not have a separate
> room to question me. Some of the policemen were cruel, asking
> whether I was sure I had been raped and one even called me a
> prostitute for walking alone in the dark," Mary said.
>
> <b>Wife beating commonplace</b>
>
> The executive director of the Centre for Rehabilitation of Abused
> Women (CREAW), which provides legal aid to abused women, told IRIN:
> "We need to sensitise the population about the criminal nature of
> violence against women."
>
> Anne Njogu went on to say that many of the Kenyan cultures do not
> view sexual violence as crime. That is why Kenya has "such a high
> prevalence of domestic and sexual offences against women".
>
> Moreover, Kenya has no law that specifically prohibits spousal
> rape, and wife beating is commonplace - and often condoned - in
> many cultures.
>
> In a disturbing new trend, there has been an increase in incidents
> of abuse by men who target minors for sex in the belief that it
> will make them immune from contracting HIV. Some men, already
> infected with HIV/AIDS, reportedly rape young girls believing that
> sex with a virgin will cure them.
>
> <b>Nowhere to turn</b>
>
> Women who have been sexually or domestically abused are often too
> scared by the stigma attached to the crime to tell their families,
> let alone report their attacks to the relevant authorities.
>
> "Stigma is such a big issue in many cultures. Women and girls blame
> themselves and fear that they will be ostracised from society if
> they admit to being raped, and they often are outcasts if they do
> so," Njogu said.
>
> Njogu spoke of the "double rape" women have to undergo when they
> are questioned by insensitive police officers, themselves operating
> with the cultural biases that condone rape.
>
> Amnesty International, in a 2002 report entitled, "Rape - The
> Invisible Crime", said victims of rape in Kenya had an enormous
> problem to persuade the police and prosecuting authorities that
> they had actually been raped. The victim must prove that she did
> not consent to the act, or that her agreement was obtained through
> threats.
> Amnesty quoted a case in Kiambu, central Kenya, in which a
> magistrate reportedly freed a church leader accused of defiling a
> six-year-old girl on the grounds that he was a "married man with
> children and, therefore, incapable of committing such an offence".
>
> <b>Inching towards a solution</b>
>
> Although the situation of women and girls in Kenya who suffer
> sexual or domestic abuse remains dire, there are glimmers of hope.
>
> In April, the National Assembly passed a motion by nominated member
> of parliament, Njoki Ndun'gu, allowing the introduction of the
> Sexual Offences Bill, which proposes reforming the law and
> enforcing harsher punishments for sex offenders.
>
> "The bill seeks to reform our existing laws, which are archaic. The
> existing laws do not provide for crimes such sexual abuse of men
> and boys, the transmission of HIV/AIDS or paedophilia," Ndun'gu
> told IRIN.
>
> "We are proposing the creation of new sexual offences and also the
> establishment of minimum sentences to act as deterrents to would-be
> offenders," she added.
>
> The police, in an effort to crack down on sexual and domestic
> violence against women and children, converted one of the city's
> oldest police stations, Kilimani, into an all-female station in
> 2004, exclusively handling cases of sexual assault on women and
> girls. The idea is to have the station manned by female police
> officers with special training in dealing with gender based violence.
>
> The establishment of the Nairobi Women's Hospital is another step
> towards assisting women who have been subjected to untold abuse by
> strangers or people close to them. While the hospital provides
> medical and psychological support, there are a few other
> organisations that deal with other aspects of gender-based violence.
>
> <b>Free shelter for battered women</b>
>
> The Nairobi Women's Hospital, in operation since 2001, is a private
> institution that specialises in obstetric and gynaecological care,
> but also provides general medical services. It has a Gender
> violence Recovery Centre (GVRC), which provides free services -
> including lab tests, medication, counselling and referrals - to
> survivors of rape and sexual violence.
>
> "When we get a new patient, they see a doctor and get emergency
> counselling. We do tests to check for HIV or pregnancy, then
> administer the PEP [HIV-post exposure prophylaxis] and several
> other tests," Sam Thenya, chief executive of the hospital, told IRIN.
>
> "The patient gets at least four sessions of counselling and can
> join, if they wish, a support group for people who have undergone
> similar attacks," he added.
>
> The GVRC, the only one of its kind in East Africa, treats up to 15
> survivors of rape and domestic violence every day. Since its
> inception four years ago, it has treated more than 4,500 patients.
>
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