'My lecturer turned me into a sex slave’; a campus girl’s pain

“These are private parts, private parts, private parts. And no one should touch them. No one should play with them.”

This is a part of a nursery song that Soma* uses to teach Mombasa girls aged nine to 12 years against sexual exploitation by either a man or a woman.

A violation she suffered at the hands of a university lecturer at a Mombasa city campus in 2016.

On a Friday, early January, 2016, the lecturer in the department of commerce beckoned the then 20-year-old Soma to his car.

They had just finished the evening lesson running from 5pm through 8.30pm. She was in her first semester of the second year, studying a degree in commerce.  She honoured his call for the sheer reason of respecting his authority.

He asked her to get into his car. It was time to make his intentions clear.

“He said I like you a lot and I want to have an intimate relationship with you. I declined,” she says.

Before she walked away, he asked for her mobile number. She also rejected this request.

But somehow, he got her number. And he kept pestering her to have an intimate relationship with him, defying the university’s anti-sexual harassment policy, which it launched in 2013.

For the next two weeks, he was on her case, calling her and sending her text and WhatsApp messages telling her that “the more she delayed accepting his offer, the more she missed out on the benefits that came with it.”

During the time the instructor pursued her, she interacted with fellow women students who shared enticing confessions of how they enjoyed their campus life courtesy of the financial support from their lovers “who drove big cars.”

“They kept telling these stories over and over until I said to myself ‘Let me also get a man who drives,’” she says.

Old lecturer

Snap! The 40-something-year-old lecturer won and she became his sex slave.

From late January to end of April 2016, he had sexual relations with her at least twice a week. Every time he had a moment with her he gave her Sh5,000 and only rang her or communicated with her when he wanted to spend time with her.

For the time he exploited her, Soma says on most occasions, he didn’t use protection and she couldn’t protest since he “owned” her.

“I was in dire need of the money,” says Soma whose father hawked boiled eggs in North Coast to raise his six children, her being the last born. Her mother died in 2014.

“I could tell the struggle my dad went through to pay my fees. Sometimes I wished I never asked him for fare - he was already struggling to raise my fees, but he always reminded me that he would do his best to educate me,” she lights up speaking about her father.

“What he gave me for my day-to-day needs was too little. I badly needed the lecturer's money to cater for my upkeep and commuter costs.” she says.

High school

Since her father would not afford to pay for a hostel near the campus, she commuted from their home, 4.8km apart.

Soma is the only child in her family to have successfully completed high school, securing a mean grade of C plus, and joining university.

“The day I stepped foot on campus, I was all over the moon. I had proved wrong my community, which despised my family. It never imagined my father would send a child to university because of the kind of job he did,” she says.

But her bliss would soon come to an end after her father failed to raise Sh63,000 for the second semester that would start in May and end in August.

And she never heard from the tutor.

“Until now, he has never called me to find out why I dropped out of campus,” she says.

“The thought of the lecturer using me and forgetting that I even existed tortured me for nearly four years. I wished my mother was still alive; I’d have confided in her. She was not just my mother but my best friend. She always gave me a listening ear.”

She says she wouldn’t attempt to open up to her father describing him as “very strict”. Until now, he doesn’t know what his daughter went through.

“I used an analogy to indirectly share with my older sisters but every time I tried, they laughed hard,” she says.

Life skills

“They said it's normal for such things to happen and it should never be an issue. I gave up on them. I opted to suffer in silence.”

In August 2020, a friend notified her of a programme in North Coast that equipped girls and women with life skills, and offered counselling to those who need it.

After attending five sessions, she felt ready to open up.

“I made the best decision. I feel relieved and at peace with myself,” says Soma, referring to the counselling session in which she shared about her mental distress induced by the exploitation of the lecturer.

“The past should stay in the past. We move on with life,” she delightedly declares.

The programme has since absorbed her as one of the eight mentors, nurturing girls aged nine to 12 years.

“We teach them how to identify, avoid and resist a sexual assault,” she says.

To meet her basic needs, Soma does freelance waitress work at a daily rate of Sh1,000. She, however, wishes to go back to university to complete her undergraduate studies.

"How I wish a well-wisher would come to my aid and help me cover my educational expenses," she says.

"I'd desire to work in an auditing firm in the finance department."

Her name has been changed to protect her privacy and dignity.

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