NAIROBI, November 18 – A Kenyan children’s non- governmental organisation on Tuesday raised concern over increased cases of sodomy although it said girls remained the most vulnerable in sexual offences.
Programs Manager for Legal Aid Program at the CRADLE, Lilian Njeru said of the 190 cases reported to the organisation last year, 13 percent of the victims were boys.
“The vulnerable age groups for the girls were between 12-14 years but for the boys it was between 4-6 years,” she said at a launch of a report titled ‘Broken Trust’.
“I believe the perpetrators target that age group because the younger they are the more vulnerable they are because they are weak,” she added.
The report indicated that 44 percent of the cases were from Nairobi while 56 percent were from Central, Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces.
It further stated that 43 percent of the cases were repeat sexual abuse, 42 percent took place once while 15 percent were of unknown frequency.
“Those whose frequency is unknown is because the victims did not reveal to us because some are too young to say,” Njeru said.
Children in the age bracket of 15-18 years and six to eight years were rated third and fourth respectively in terms of vulnerability and the months of March, May and August recorded the highest cases.
However, it indicated that some instances of sexual abuses had been repeated over a substantial period of time making it difficult to ascertain the time when the offence was committed.
Legal Aid’s Program Officer Jude Nalyanya noted that most of the abusers were men.
“We’ve heard cases where the perpetrator was as young as 12 years alleged to have defiled a five year old girl in Nairobi and the oldest was 89 years in Oyugis. It mainly has to do with socialisation,” he said.
Deputy Director Gilbert Onyango suggested that the government should invest more in enhancing access to justice by increasing accessibility of the justice system.
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