To be a woman in Kenya: a look at sexual and gender-based violence
By Ann Njogu - Michelle McHardy | September 2009
In 2006, the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) – a non-governmental organization promoting gender equality and justice through the empowerment of women and elimination of discrimination and violence – took on the case of a woman who was brutally attacked while waiting for a bus at the country’s capital, Nairobi. She was dragged behind a bush and gang raped by 10 men for several hours. Later, in the public hospital, she was asked by the attending doctor (who said that he did not have gloves) to insert her fingers into her vagina and remove the semen with her own fingers and place it on the doctor’s laboratory slab for examination. Still ashamed, embarrassed, and sore from the attack, this completely inappropriate act by the doctor violated her all over again. It was as if she was attacked twice in one night.
Keywords: Kenya
