Child rape has been on the rise, many children are raped at their tender age and they cannot talk about it because they are unaware of what is taking place. If someone has not caught the rapist in the act then a girl might be raped for as long as it takes. Being a victim of child rape I know how it feels. Though it’s almost two decades I still feel the pain.

Children are not only raped by strangers, but even neighbours and relatives. I am a survivor as you put it, of sexual abuse by a relative and defilement by a neighbour. We were living in Swahili houses when I was four years old and my mom was living upcountry while my dad would go to work even for weeks before returning back home. I was then left with my sister cousin, she was the cruel type and so commanding, so I did everything she asked because I would seriously receive beatings from her, she pretended to be a Christian and every member of our church knew about it, but if only they knew what kind of person she really was.

After the everyday fellowship we attended, she’d take me to two of his boyfriends who lived in separate areas, they used to stay in one room separated with a curtain, she would let me sit on the sofa sets while they have sex on the side of the curtain, I dint know what was happening but I recall we would get home very late and neighbours would complain.

But that was nothing, at night she would creep into my bed and make me satisfy her sexually, she would wake me in the middle of the night when I was dead asleep and force me to do her things that now I now know would arouse her sexually. She dared me never to utter a word to anyone and I kept mum, I had no one to turn to, I had to play along until when my mom finally moved back a year later. But still I couldn’t say anything because she would skin me alive; furthermore who would have believed me, she would have probably turned against me.

As if that was not enough, I can’t recall how old I was exactly but I should have been around five or six years old and still living in the same plot. We had this neighbour who just moved in, he was related to our family friend and neighbour, since he had just come I think from upcountry, he spent most of the time indoors.

We were about six little girls in our plot and when our parents weren’t around we would play together and just have fun, then one day he called me, growing up in the strict family and society, I had to conform to anything I was commanded to do by an older person, I had to respect him.

He sent me to the shop to buy him eggs and I quickly ran to the shops and within a sec I was back, since he was alone in the house, he got hold of me and told me not to go, he was so masculine while I was a skinny little girl, since he was much older, I had to obey, he started caressing me, I didn’t know what he was doing so I just sat there and stared, I was so scared but I didn’t know what to do because I never knew what he wanted to do, I had to let him go on and that day I was defiled, he later gave me a piece of tissue paper and told me to go and wipe myself in the toilet. I locked myself inside there, cried my heart out because I was in so much pain.

I couldn’t talk it out with someone because I did not know what to say, how would I have told my mother that the man who just came to our plot and who is the brother to our closest family friend had done ‘tabia mbaya’ to me, who would have believed me in the first place, I never even thought of telling anyone. I kept it all to myself.

A few days later, he used the same trick, he sent me and I had to obey, he did the same thing and it was too much pain I still recall, the third time he sent me I was reluctant and he kept telling me ‘wewe umeanza kuwa kichwa ngumu, ukitumwa na watu wakubwa unakataa’ in order not to attract too much attention and not look disrespectful, I had to comply with his demands, this time it was too much I couldn’t take it anymore, when he carried and put me on the bed, I had to roll and fell so hard on the floor but thank God I escaped and I swore to myself he would never get me again.

Most of the time he tried to lure me but since I knew what was in store for me, I hesitated, sometimes he followed me to the bathroom and demanded I let him in but I had grown much stronger than he thought, I was ready to expose him if he dared touch me again, the issue was, who would believe me, I was just a kid.

I was shocked one day when he called one of my friends who we were living together with, the girl hesitated and I wondered why, later on she told me he had forced her to sleep with him, this tormented my soul and it made me despise men to this date, each time a man asks for sex I recall the past, I still recall how painful it was and wouldn’t want to go through it again.

When I was in secondary school I shared my experience for the first time to my best friend and she told me she had gone through the same ordeal and that a large percent of young girls go through it, I could not believe it. It made me realize that young girls suffer in silence not because of circumstances but because they don’t know what is taking place and the threat they receive from the rapist.

I was recently in a farewell party of one magistrate who had advocated so much for children’s rights in Kilifi and I was astonished when he said that in some families when parents quarrel, and the wife seem to have overpowered the husband, he rapes or defiles one of their children to get even with the wife.

Children suffer more because their reproductive organs are not well developed, what hurts is that they don’t know what’s taking place and people are taking advantage of them, they then have to live with the traumatizing past, am 24 now but when I learnt about reproductive health in school, it answered so many questions for me, that was when I also realized what had happened to me.

God however has paid all those misdeeds for me because the lives of those two people who abused me are a real mess and when I heard about their current lives, I said to myself, God must be punishing them for what they did to me, that is enough justice for me, and am contented because it made me stronger, it has given me the courage to write about this without feeling any shame, am hoping parents will take keen look on their children so that such predicaments cannot befall on their children because just the way my friend told me, many children are suffering in silence, hearts are being destroyed, lives are being shattered.

Story by the victim who I will call L. it starts with you, lets stop this people who are manner less and save our children, girls and women.