When silence hurts: Survivors' stories highlight grim reality of sexual violence in Kenya

Rape and defilement are serious crimes under Kenyan law. Yet, between April 2024 and March 2025, the Gender Based Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC) recorded 3,464 cases, an average of about 10 every day. This is tragic, given that even one incident is one too many.

For Phyllis Atieno*, 25, from Huyani village in Koru, Kisumu county, nothing could have prepared her for the sheer horror of an attack.

In November 2024, as she walked nearly 15 kilometres to the nearest shopping centre in Koru, a stranger blocked her path. Wielding a sharp panga, he threatened to cut her into pieces if she so much as let out a squeak for help.

“He took advantage of the vast sugarcane plantations on either side of the road, and the fact that no one else was around that stretch,” she recalls, the events of that day still vivid in her mind.

Fortunately, she knew what to do. Within an hour of the ordeal, she was at the police station in Koru.

“I told the police what had happened. They booked my report and gave me an OB number. Two officers then asked me to take them back to the scene of the incident, and I did.”

At the site, the disturbed soil in the sugarcane plantation was still moist. The imprints of her hands were visible. Her footprints were fresh. So were the perpetrators. The struggle that had ensued, though one-sided, was evident in the stalks of sugarcane left drooping under the force of human bodies.

The officers advised her to head to a nearby health facility, where a trained clinician could both treat her and preserve the evidence on her body.

“When a victim of sexual violence comes to the hospital, it is for two reasons: first, to receive medical care, and second, to collect evidence that can support the pursuit of justice against the perpetrator,” says Dr John Njuguna, a medical doctor with the GVRC and Nairobi Women’s Hospital.

Dr Njuguna has attended to hundreds of women and young girls, brought in after assaults.

“There are survivors who arrive at the health facility in critical condition, he explains. In such cases, we swing into action, every hand on deck, to save their lives and to stabilize their vital signs.

“But if they are stable and conscious, we offer psychological first aid, which can be done by any trained person. We do this because we need the survivor to be calm and to feel safe so that they are able to tell us exactly what they can remember about the incident, as well as their own medical history. This information would inform what we do next as well as medical tests we will conduct and the treatments we will give.”

Prophylaxis

Procedures that may or may not be done, depending on the information supplied by the survivor include: a HIV test, a vaginal swab (to check for pre-existing infections), test for hepatitis B, and a pregnancy test.

Survivors will be offered prophylaxis against HIV and Hepatitis B – if they don’t have prior established infections. They will also be given prophylaxis against syphilis and gonorrhoea, or treated, if they are already infected.

“These Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are life threatening if left untreated. For survivors who aren’t infected already, prophylaxis will save them the financial burden, and the consequences of ill health, that may come with these infections,” says Dr Njuguna.

For women – and girls – of reproductive age, depending on the nature of the assault, they will be provided with drugs to prevent pregnancy. An unplanned pregnancy, from sexual assault no less, may be a permanent reminder that will force the survivor to relive the ordeal over and over again, notes the medic.

Atieno was able to receive the range of medical and the psychological assistance that Dr Njuguna has talked about. What if she did not have the understanding? Or even worse, what if it was a minor who has been taken advantage of and was not able to articulate the abuse in good time because the perpetrator is their own father? It sounds implausible, doesn’t it?

Well, this is exactly what happened to Joan Anunda*, a girl in Butula, Busia county, in 2023. Aged 7 at the time, her father took advantage of a period of about a week when her mother travelled back to her maiden village to visit her kin.

“I had left the girl to sleep inside her grandmother’s house. I believed she was safe. It turns out that evening her father went to fetch her from the house, telling the old woman that the little girl would be safer with him in our house. That was the first time he abused her. The abuse went on a few more times,” says Faith Adhiambo*, Anunda’s mother.

The little girl never told anyone what was happening because her father had warned [and threatened] her against telling anyone.

About three months later, the girl “began walking strangely—like a duck,” Adhiambo recalls. “I asked her why, but she insisted she was fine. Soon, my women friends also noticed and one of them suggested that she might be experiencing abuse. That is when I decided to inspect her body.

What I found were grotesque wounds I had never seen on a child her age. Some of her flesh would peel off with her clothes. It was then that she finally confessed what was happening.

I confronted her father, but he feigned ignorance. I immediately took the girl to the police and later to hospital, where she was diagnosed with syphilis.”

There is a chance that Adhiambo was infected as well. However, the doctor who treated her daughter explained that since her immune system is developed in comparison to the 7-year-old’s, the symptoms are yet to take root.

Both syphilis and gonorrhoea are treatable with specific antibiotic regimen; administered by a clinician. HIV and Hepatitis B have no cure: “These can only be managed once they are entrenched in the body,” says Dr Njuguna. Then there is the long journey to fully internalizing the weight of the ordeal: dealing with mental health following the assault.

Catherine Moraa is a psychologist. She counsels rape and defilement survivors. She says: “The journey to healing continues after the hospital process. This is because rape and defilement don’t just affect physical health; they affect mental health that could have far-reaching consequences in the lives of the survivors.”

According to Moraa, defilement could be the source of trauma for a woman in their adulthood; as they struggle to process the ordeal and how it distorted their reality.

“As a psychologist, it is my job to establish if this survivor still needs more psychological therapy. Some survivors may get feelings of self-loathing and might want to self-harm. Some survivors may go into a suicidal spiral. When I am convinced that these are likely, I refer them to a psychiatrist who has the capacity to prescribe medication,” Moraa says.

A survivor, she says, will need regular psychotherapy. Her job during these sessions is to help the survivor process their emotions and feelings fully, and still be able to revert to living their normal lives. Psychotherapy may last for months, or even years, depending on the extent of the trauma.

Do not suffer in silence

In defilement cases, Moraa says, there are two people who will need therapy.

“The first, of course, is the child who was assaulted. We call it child-therapy: which is different from therapy with an adult.

“With children, we try to pick out trauma from the way they are interacting with external stimuli. We place them in an environment that will let the child in them interact. For instance, we offer them games to play. We introduce songs and we sing together. We give them fun stuff to do; like drawing and painting.

“We can be able to pick a lot just from studying how they interact in their natural environment and what they are saying as we talk to them in the language of a child,” she explains.

Frida Mogoi is a clinical officer and child psychologist at Khunyangu sub-county hospital in Busia county. Her job is to perform child friendly services and for paediatric care – especially around defilement cases.

She says: “Children, unlike adults, can be manipulated not to speak the truth. For this reason, I will be keen to their reflexes around specific people, while also communicating to them, at their level, to know that the assault they suffered should never have happened.”

After child therapy, psychologists shift their focus to the parents. “We hold sessions with them to establish where they are and how the event has affected them,” says Moraa. It is not uncommon, Moraa says, to find parents reeling in the aftermath: blaming themselves for the incident.

Moraa’s advise to survivors of rape or defilement is for them not to assume that they will be alright. “We have qualified psychologists and counselors to help them stabilize their mental health. Do not suffer in silence.

And if it is a challenge we can’t handle, there are other experts, like psychiatrists, who are also available to offer treatment.”

Phyllis Atieno’s case is currently ongoing at Tamu Law Courts in Kisumu county. Joan Anunda’s father is right now behind bars at Korinda Prison in Busia county and the case is with the judiciary at Busia Law Courts.