This archive report was first published on 14 December 2019.
On November 2, 2019, a 16-year-old girl was walking along Nyali Road in Mombasa County when she was accosted by two policemen, forced into a vehicle, and taken to a cave on Mombasa beach, where she says she was defiled.
According to her police report, which has also been recorded with the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida-Kenya), the officers, who referred to each other as 'afande', not by their names, first asked her where she was going.
She told them she was going to visit her grandmother, but they then asked her to board the vehicle. When she refused, the officer in civilian clothes brandished a pistol and pointed it at her abdomen.
She was ordered to enter the car, where one of the officers started touching her inappropriately and inquired whether she had a boyfriend. When she said she didn't have one and asked him to stop touching her, he said she was pretending to be a virgin and that he would confirm.
The minor said the officers kept on sexually harassing her inside the vehicle until they approached Chui Road, a few meters from Mombasa beach. The vehicle stopped, and she alighted with the two officers and walked to the beach through feeder roads.
As they walked along the beach, the minor says, the officer who had asked her about being a virgin kept repeating the question and warned her against running away, threatening to shoot her dead.
When she met people who knew her, the officers brandished their guns and kept them at bay. The officers then took her to a deserted section of the beach, where she was pushed into a cave.
She said in her police report that the officer pushed her inside one of the caves and told her to undress. She declined and pleaded with him, but he brandished his gun again. He forcefully undressed her and defiled her.
As one of the officers was defiling her, she said, his colleague was standing guard, perhaps on the lookout for passers-by.
After the ordeal, the officers escorted her to Links Road in Nyali, where she boarded a public service vehicle back home. They kept threatening her, and the officer who had defiled her pinched her and warned her against disclosing the ordeal to the tout or anyone, saying they would kill them all.
The officer, the 16-year-old said, bragged that no action would be taken against him even if she reported the incident to the police station or to Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i.
When the minor arrived home, she shared with her aunt what had happened, and was then taken to Coast General Hospital where she was treated and put on medication.
The family is concerned that despite reporting the matter, nothing has so far been done. The officers have not been arrested, and the family fears that the matter might be covered up and the perpetrators might just get away with the offence.
