Why do this to me? Girl asks mother after eloping with defiler

Mwende has become crippled since she was raped. [PHOTOS: PHILIP MUASYA/STANDARD]

By PHILIP MUASYA

Kitui, Kenya: At Kaloo village in Mwingi Central sub-county, Kitui County, a girl is tethered by cruel life. Mwende (name changed to protect her identity) is only 15 years old but she has been to hell and back.

With her improvised crutches, the emaciated girl wobbles out of their mud hovel with sunken eyes bearing a blank, agonising look. She sits on a piece of wood and coils herself as if scared of life. The stench emanating from within her is evidence of untold horror. She bends her head and feebly begins to swat a swarm of houseflies hovering over her. Her stunted physique betrays her age.

Once a bubbly girl, Mwende thinks of the old school days and wishes she could turn back the clock. But she cannot. She is paralysed from waist down due to a brutal sexual ordeal meted on her three years ago.  With some prodding from guardians, Mwende opens up and faltingly narrates her ordeal. She remembers the day clearly as she does her attacker, a man who has been freely roaming the streets as she wastes away.

Ulterior motive

On September 13, 2011 at around 1pm Mwende met the ‘devil’ who would tragically change her life. She was then a Class Three pupil aged 11.

“I was coming from school and was just a few metres from our home when I saw him approach. I used to see him with my mother so I did not think much of it,” she says. On this day, however, the man identified as Peter Nzuka, who was her mother’s lover had an ulterior motive.

He grabbed the girl and shepherded her to a nearby thicket.  “He stepped on my thigh hard and I felt my bone crack,” Mwende says. Having subdued the girl, the assailant defiled her until she could scream no more. The girl was now bloody, the beast had accomplished its mission.

But what happened immediately remains a big puzzle to Mwende up to this day. Her biological mother emerged from nearby and together with her assailant carried the hapless girl and locked her in their house. She stayed in this house for three weeks before anyone got wind of her tribulations as her mother and lover went on with their business without a care in the world.

Her paternal grandmother Mbisu Mengi noticed the girl’s curious absence and confronted the mother. She was dismissed with a wave of the hand.  “She casually told me she had sent the girl to her maternal grandmother. After asking around, I found it was a lie. That is when I summoned her aunt and together we demanded to know the girl’s whereabouts,” she says. The mother relented and directed them to her house. What the women saw broke their hearts. Mwende was now a caged animal, smelly, weak and on the verge of death. The women wept uncontrollably. 

 “They used to tie me on the bed and lock the door,” says the girl of the beastly act dispensed by her mother and her lover.  The area chief, Samuel Maithya, then summoned his officers and rushed the girl to Mwingi District Hospital where doctors noted severe injuries inflicted through sexual assault.  “She was in a terrible state. She opened up to the doctors and told them of the sexual assault she underwent through a person she knew,” Maithya said.

The hospital, however, could not adequately handle the case. She was referred to Embu Provincial General Hospital (PGH) for specialised treatment.

Despair and anguish

Due to lack of money, Mwende was discharged from Embu PGH to await her fate at home. Every passing day brings with it despair and anguish of untold proportions.  The chief says the suspect was later arrested and arraigned in Mwingi Law Courts where he denied defiling the girl.

He was remanded at Waita GK prison for two years as the case progressed, says Maithya. However, the devil in her mother struck again. The girl’s father Zakayo Mathembe who had now returned home from Kangundo in Machakos County where he worked as a farmhand says his wife set all the medical documents concerning their daughter’s case on fire.  This gave her boyfriend a smooth ride to freedom. He was finally acquitted for lack of evidence. He then eloped with the girl’s mother to an unknown destination.

Does the girl have an idea why her mother would conspire with her lover to harm her?  “I blew up their scheme to sell my father’s timber and they became bitter. Nzuka warned me that he would punish me. My mother told me to stop meddling in their affairs,” she explains.

Mwende’s grandmother Mengi  says the man befriended her daughter-in-law while her husband was away. “I demanded to know what he was doing with a married woman at her matrimonial home but they both became hostile and threatened me.

Fearing for my life, I kept a distance from their affair,” Mengi says.  The girl’s grandmother and her jobless father have hit a dead end. Mwende’s left thigh has burst into lesions and the boils ooze  pus.

 “She is not getting any medication at all. The only thing we can afford is aspirins to alleviate her pain. As you can see, those don’t help much,” says a forlorn Mathembe with a tinge of sadness in his voice.  Mwende says she would like to go back to school.

This however will remain a pipe dream unless she receives specialised treatment, which her family cannot afford.