He did what I never imagined my father would, girl recalls

On Friday, UNICEF led the world in marking the second International Day of the Girl Child, highlighting the power of innovation to get more girls in school and improve the quality of learning for all children.
But as the world came together to honour girls, and indeed all children, defilement of minors is becoming a big problem in Kenya. From central Kenya to the Rift Valley, an increasing number of girls are being defiled by their fathers, teachers and relatives.
Kenyans must unite to defend these girls and give them an opportunity to pursue and realise their full potential in life.
Cases of fathers defiling their daughters are on the rise. In Nyeri, two girls – aged nine and 14 – were defiled by their 55-year-old HIV positive father. His stated intention was to infect them with the virus.
Monstrous father
The two girls are at a loss and unable to comprehend how the man who is supposed to protect them suddenly turned against them in such a beastly manner.
Then man defiled his daughters in the presence of his bedridden HIV-positive wife, who had no strength to rescue her helpless children. And although the man was recently convicted and jailed for 50 years, the children are traumatised and living in fear. They painfully recall the days when their father repeatedly defiled them, telling them he wanted them to die of HIV like their mother who was helplessly squirming on her deathbed as he did the unthinkable.
“I arrived home from school and found dad in the sitting room. Mum was sleeping in the bedroom,” starts the nine-year-old class four pupil.
“I did not expect that my own father would do what he did to me. He stripped me and dragged me to the sofa and forced me to do tabia mbaya with him,” she says, tears tickling down her cheeks.
“He wanted to infect me with HIV. That is what he told me, yet there was nothing wrong I had done, neither do I have anything to do with him contracting the disease.”
The father did not stop there; he defiled her yet again when her mother was admitted to hospital, before turning to his elder daughter aged 14.
She, too, is struggling to forget the ordeal she suffered in the hands of the man she says she is embarrassed to call father.
“I did not know he had also defiled my sister, because he threatened to kill us if we ever disclosed to anyone what he had done,” recounts the Class Eight pupil.
“My mum was bedridden at the Nyeri Provincial General Hospital, and I was all alone with him at home. He followed me to the kitchen and defiled me,” the older daughter said.

“He told me he wanted to infect me with the virus so that I would die just like his two former wives and my mum who was on her death bed,” she adds.
So traumatised were the girls that they never told anybody what they went through even after moving to their grandmother’s place following their mother’s death.
Their mother took the secret to her grave. The man all along prevented the in-laws from visiting her in hospital and even attempted to rape a sister-in-law who had come to visit her while she was bedridden at home.
Ironically, it is the same man who broke the news that he had defiled his children, through a text message he sent to the children’s grandmother.
Sigh of relief
In the message written in poor Kiswahili, the man told the granny to visit a VCT centre and purchase anti-retroviral drugs for the children since he had defiled them. Even after their father had confessed to having defiled them, it was not easy to get the traumatised children to open up.

“They remained mum when I asked them about it. In fact, I had to threaten them with a thorough beating,” says their granny. They were taken to a VCT centre and counselled before undergoing an HIV test.
The family heaved a sigh of relief when the tests returned negative resultsPolice Constable Brenda Okwach, who handled the case, narrated to The Standard On Sunday how angry she was as she investigated and eventually prosecuted the case in court. “It dawned on me then that I was not only an investigating officer but also a mother who should redeem the lives of those innocent children. I steadily counselled them and vowed to serve them nothing but justice,” recounts Ms Okwach.
The younger girl aspires to be a lawyer and eventually a judge so that she can serve justice to girls who have gone through what she and her sister went through 

Her sister, who will be sitting her Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examinations this year, and who topped her class in the last end of term tests, wants to be a doctor and a children’s rights crusader so that she can help young girls to speak out on sexual offences.
In an interview with The Standard On Sunday, Nyeri County director of children services George Kibuku, said the rising cases of defilement of children, some as young as five years old, was worrying.
“The community needs to be sensitised that violence against children is violence against the entire society,” Mr Kibuku said.
According to him, the 2012/2013 annual report shows Nyeri County reported 98 cases of children defilement, higher than the 69 cases reported in 2011 in the entire central Kenya region.