This archive report was first published on 8 July 2019.
According to records in local hospitals, 493 girls aged between 10 and 14 became pregnant last year.
One of these girls is Ivey Atieno, a 15-year-old who was defiled by a 22-year-old man she barely knew. He lured her into a cyber café he managed, where he forced himself on her.
Atieno's menstrual period was due that week, but she waited three more weeks before discovering she was pregnant. She was a Class Seven pupil at the time and is now a Form One student and mother to a baby boy aged one and a half.
Atieno's story is just one of many saddening tales of minors being defiled and impregnated in Kenya. Data at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital gender-based violence recovery centre shows that between 30 to 40 cases are reported monthly, with the burden coming from Seme and Muhoroni sub-counties.
More than 80 per cent of rape victims were below 18 years, according to data from the GBVRC. Only last week, a deputy headteacher appeared before Ahero Senior Principal Magistrate Patrick Olengo accused of defiling four schoolgirls, two of whom are pregnant.
Community paralegal Mary Owiti says nearly 30 other girls are facing a similar predicament to the 13 that had recently been reintegrated into the community and taken back to schools after counselling and treatment sessions at the GBVRC.
She attributes the trend to domestic violence, poor parental guidance, lack of sex education, peer pressure, and poverty, which expose minors to sex pests who lure them with solace from abusive families and petty cash for necessities and cheap gifts.
The county's gender coordinator, Winnie Ogot, says her team is out to sensitise the community on the challenges. 'Victims do not want to report the cases due to violence at home. They choose to suffer in silence,' she said.
