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Wangu's story: from rape victim to campaigner

Monday, 30 July 2012 09:27 GMT

Violence against women in Kenya is widespread - and trivialised

NAIROBI (TrustLaw) – When the carjacker took a bullet out of his gun and put it in her hand, Wangu Kanja knew she had run out of choices. 

“He told me if you don’t do what I am asking you to do, this is what I am going to use on you,” she said. 

In the dark alleyway, she removed her clothes and let him rape her. 

“My whole world went into a standstill,” the 36-year-old told TrustLaw. 

Her ordeal was not yet over. 

After a while, the other three carjackers returned from the ATMs, where they had withdrawn money using Kanja and her two friends’ bank cards. 

They had been carjacked at her friend’s gate earlier that evening. The robbers let the two men go, keeping Kanja as “security” in case they had lied about their PINs. 

“They started talking about how they can gang rape [me],” she said. 

“I kept on just saying, ‘Please God let it not happen to me where all of them are going to gang rape me because I don’t think I would handle it.’” 

With daylight creeping over the horizon, the young men decided not to risk it. 

Instead, they dropped her off at a bus stop. 

On the way home, Kanja came across some policemen at a petrol station and told them what had happened. They advised her not to tell her boyfriend about the rape because he would leave her. 

Later at the station, they simply recorded the incident as robbery with violence. 

Kanja didn’t mind. All she wanted to do was go home, scrub herself clean and get Post-Exposure Prophylaxis medication to reduce her chance of contracting HIV/AIDS. 

IT’S LIKE YOU ARE CURSED 

Kanja’s experience is typical. 

Only one out of 20 women in Kenya reports being raped, according to Kenya’s Federation of Women Lawyers, FIDA. 

Women fear being stigmatised if their rape becomes public knowledge, particularly if they are unmarried. Women’s virginity is prized in many Kenyan communities. 

“People start looking at you differently when you say you went through rape,” said Kanja. 

“You are tainted. You need to be outcast. It’s like you are cursed.” 

Few women have confidence in the police or the judicial system. Kenya’s notoriously ill-disciplined police, who have themselves been accused of raping women, are rarely sympathetic to victims. 

Hopes of securing a conviction are slim. An Australian aid worker, Charlotte Campbell-Stephen, has been in court for the last six years, seeking to prosecute four men who gang raped her in the Nairobi house where she was staying. 

The state’s lack of seriousness in addressing sexual violence reflects Kenya’s traditional patriarchal culture, which militates against women. 

“In some ethnic groups, if you don’t actually beat a woman, what they say is you don’t love her,” said Kanja. 

Violence against women is widespread – experienced by four out of ten Kenyan women according to the 2008/09 Kenya Demographic Health Survey – but it is trivialised. 

In a parliamentary debate on landmark Sexual Offences Act (2006), which prescribes stiff penalties for sex crimes, MP Paddy Ahenda said: “In our culture, when women say ‘No’, they mean ‘Yes’ unless it’s a prostitute.” 

INSIDE YOU ARE DYING 

Kanja fell into depression. 

“People can see you are functioning but deep inside, you are dying and you don’t know how to handle it,” she said. 

She started drinking heavily and sleeping around. 

“You are trying to fill your void,” she said. 

“You are trying to just convince yourself that you are actually attractive enough, that the whole rape ordeal was a thing that happened and it will go away.” 

After two and a half years, she responded to a newspaper advert offering courses in counselling. 

“I enrolled for them just to keep myself busy and my mind off what happened,” she said. 

“That’s when I started addressing my rape ordeal issues.” 

She became a counsellor and went on to set up the Wangu Kanja Foundation in 2005, which runs a 24 hour crisis line for survivors of sexual violence, helping them to access medical, psychological and legal support. 

“I decided to use my personal experience to help other people,” she said. 

Kanja often speaks on radio talk shows and in universities and holds discussions across the country to raise awareness about sexual violence. 

“We don’t talk about sex openly, so how are we expected to address issues of sexual violence? It’s a taboo,” she said. 

“If you don’t talk to people openly about certain issues, you don’t get solutions for them. We need to change our mindsets.” 

Her dream is to set up a residential centre offering comprehensive care and support for survivors.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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