How Court Users' Committee is easing access to SGBV justice in Kisumu
Chief Magistrate Dickson Onyango during the interview on August 20, 2025.
What you need to know:
- Nancy’s ordeal highlights deep flaws in Kenya’s justice system where threats, delays, and silencing derail justice.
- Court Users Committees in Kisumu strengthen accountability, accelerate trials, and restore hope for survivors seeking timely justice.
The events of that day in 2023 remain unforgettable to 17-year-old Nancy Auma*. A man, her parents and school had trusted, took advantage of her, defiled and threatened Nancy who was then aged 15.
Prior, the minor had been sent to collect vegetables at their family farm at around 6pm in the company of her younger sister. To get to the farm, Nancy says they took a path bordering her school. It is while walking past the school fence that her teacher invited her in.
He then instructed the minor, who was a Standard Eight pupil, to get into the office and collect revision materials. “He entered the office seconds later asking if I had seen the papers, before I could answer, he closed the door and defiled me,” Nancy says.
The perpetrator had gone ahead to lock up the minor in the school offices and only released her later at night, threatening to harm her and her family if she shared her ordeal with them. Back at home, her parents, who were concerned about her delayed return, had launched a search. “I met my parents on my way home and after narrating what had transpired, they escorted me to record a statement at the police station.”
The girl explains that the perpetrator was arrested and charged but later released on bail. Meanwhile, she relocated to her aunt’s place, a couple of kilometres away from home. The case dragged for weeks and while Nancy waited to testify in court, the suspect trailed her and started threatening her yet again.
“One day after school, her aunt received a random call from an unknown caller who requested to speak to Nancy. The caller who was the perpetrator went ahead to instruct me on what to say when called upon to testify,” Nancy recalls.
She spoke to her aunt about the threats and even moved to police station to record a statement, but nothing was done. Instead, the police asked for more time to investigate the incident. A couple of weeks later, Nancy sat her Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exam and got back to her parent’s home. Here, she met the perpetrator on a regular basis.
“He started handing me letters explaining that I should name one Brian as the person who had defiled me. He warned that my family and I would not be safe if I proceeded to name him.”
The survivor says her mother had come across the letters and yet again reported to the police, but the officers dismissed the accusations, saying the handwriting was not the perpetrator’s. Months later, when Nancy was presented in court, she did exactly as the perpetrator had advised. “I was not sure of the security of my family and myself. I needed to change my statement because with that, I was sure of my security,” she says.
Tip of the iceberg
Johannes Obong’o, the founder of Violence against Women and Girls Community-Based Organisation, Nancy’s case is just a fraction of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) cases that often fail to get justice because of avoidable circumstances. He says delays by witnesses to testify in court often subject survivors to threats by perpetrators. “In such cases, there are higher chances that a witness may either decide to change their statement or fail to show up in court.”
He further explains that when children delay to testify, they are likely to forget what happened the day they were defiled. He says another challenge is a survivor and her family resorting to Kangaroo courts while blaming it on delayed justice. “The fact that a child has to be reminded of their defilement experience also ends up re-traumatising them,” says Johannes, who adds that there are occasions when a child has to wait for three years before a judgment is delivered.
“There is a case where a young girl, defiled at the age of 14, had her case concluded when she was 18 years,” he says.
Johannes says the survivors are now banking on the Kisumu County Court Users' Committee (CUC) to put in place measures that fast-track SGBV justice. The consultative body composed of representatives from justice sectors, namely the Judiciary, the National Police Service, the Kenya Prisons Service, the Law Society of Kenya, county officials, children’s department and civil society organisations, meet quarterly per year to address obstacles to justice.
“Through the CUC meetings, we were able to raise concerns about how delayed witness testimony hinders justice, a concern that has since been addressed,” says Johannes, who says the number of courts in Kisumu ensures survivors testify in less than two weeks.
He further explains that the platform allows different stakeholders to raise concerns, including about compromise by those in authority. “Our major role is finding out where the gap is and addressing it with the relevant stakeholders,” Johannes says.
Wilfred Mogere, National Police Service Nyanza regional logistics officer, says through the CUCs, a number of officers have been benefitting from refresher training in handling forensic evidence, presentation of relevant exhibits in court and execution of warrants of arrest. The officer says previously, cases of witnesses missing court sessions had been normalised, but this is no longer the case today. “It is no longer just about taking a case to court, we are more concerned about defending a case so that the survivors get justice.”
Wilfred, however, says one of the major challenges affecting the justice system is transfers of police officers.
Until 2019, Nina Masore, Equality Now programmes officer at the sexual violence department, says nongovernment organisations championing women’s and girls’ rights invest in training and meeting different stakeholders at intervals.
Nina Masore, Equality Now programmes officer at the Sexual Violence Department, during an interview on August 21, 2025.
In 2019, the organisation embarked on a programme named Gender Justice, which embraced the use of CUCs for better coordination of service delivery. “We realised the relevance of the CUCs as a revolutionary vehicle to convene different stakeholders to address human rights, including SGBV,” she says. “Coming together was also an opportunity to get real issues and voices from the ground while getting timely updates.”
Nina says the organisation went ahead to train the stakeholders, a move aimed at ensuring the programme was a success. The officer says at the county level, they have partnered with the Kisumu Medical and Education Trust, who have been tasked to train all community-based organisations and now form part of the CUCs. Currently, five out of seven sub-counties in Kisumu have courts with active CUCs.
“During the CUC meetings, each of the stakeholders are required to present their GBV data. For instance, if a police officer recorded 15 cases, but the courts only received three, we probe further to understand what happened to the remaining cases,” Nina says.
She explains that one of the many issues that have since been raised in the meetings include a complaint by a magistrate about survivors who were being forced to pay Sh1,000 for P3 Forms in public hospitals.
The magistrate had also raised concerns over delays by medical officers to present DNA evidence in court. At the time, the magistrate said he had five cases that had been mentioned in court for weeks due to the delays. “We had a memo issued to all public hospitals in the county, warning the management against demanding payment from perpetrators or face the consequences. The forms are now being given free of charge,” said County Executive Committee for Gender Beatrice Odongo.
Beatrice says the CUCs also played a vital role to ensure establishment of Kombewa Law Courts in Seme sub-county, one of the places with the leading cases of SGBV. She notes that through improved advocacy, more survivors have been coming out to report cases in their quest for justice while abandoning Kangaroo courts.
Recanting of evidence
Chief Magistrate Dickson Onyango says previously, there were cases where survivors are made to recant their testimony or relocate from jurisdiction of the court before testifying further derailing justice. Since January, he has handled 18 SGBV cases and concluded seven, he says. He notes that with the measures put in place, the justice system has greatly improved, with some of the SGBV cases being concluded within three months.
“One of the challenges we are still facing is failure by the survivor to report the cases. Sometimes, we have had cases of discrepancies of data by the civil society organisations and the courts,” Dickson says, calling for increased awareness creation at the grassroots.
*Name changed to protect the identity and privacy of the teenage girl.
