Kenyan women’s horrific tales of rape by British soldiers

On June 2003, Elizabeth Rikana confided in Amnesty International officials, on her devastating rape experience at the hands of British soldiers, shortly after she completed high school. Elizabeth, a descendant of the remote Maasai village of Dol Dol, north of Nanyuki town, had trekked for three kilometres to collect water from a functioning well. As she filled her cans, she caught sight of three British soldiers, belonging to UK’s Second Light Infantry Battalion, approaching her.

They greeted her in Swahili and Elizabeth replied in English, believing they required water and desired to assist her fill her cans. One of them moved closer, unsettling her as he held her hand. She was mortified with trepidation as another soldier moved behind her and lowered his pants. She then became conscious of the fact that she was in a secluded area, with no one to assist her. Two of the soldiers raped her, while the third one, stood by holding their guns.

Overcome by humiliation derision and ill-repute, Elizabeth didn't visit a health facility. Her mistrust for law enforcement also prevented her from reporting the attack to a police facility. Her debilitating mental state and lack of emotional support further petrified and coerced her into silence.

She was apprehensive to report the attack, believing that police officers would laugh at her as they often did to rape victims. In her Dol Dol community, people were also suspicious of girls who had been to school and would often regard them as prostitutes.

In Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, she touches on how victims of rape face insurmountable obstacles and a compounding set of circumstances, when trying to bring their perpetrators to justice. Many women who have endured rape or other forms of sexual abuse are viciously stigmatised and intimidated by cultural attitudes and to seek redress.

Acknowledgement of rape often leads to hostility from the family. Those who seek justice are confronted by a system that ignores, denies and even condones violence against women, and protects rapists, whether they are state officials or private individuals.

Women who have been raped are primitively blamed for it, and are victimised by being held complicit for falling victim to their vicious barbaric attacks. After a few months, Elizabeth realised she was pregnant. Her family’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy was harsh. The family had invested considerable money in her education and felt that it had been wasted.

She encountered excruciating aggravation when undergoing labour and underwent a caesarean section while delivering twins, but one died in the process. Her trauma grew to severe post-partum depression and she shelved her ambition to study law. Her daughter was exceedingly bullied insulted and taunted at school and was referred to as mzungu and other derogatory words in reference to her biracial skin.

Over 650 rape cases have been perpetrated by British soldiers living in military camps in Kenya, in the past five decades. Including the gang rape of Jecinta Tipatet, the wife of an assistant chief, by three UK soldiers engaged in the construction of Dol Dol Primary School. A teenager, Oseina Thomas Koitat, also revealed her disturbing tale of how she was gang raped by seven British soldiers while leading sheep to her parents' homestead.

The alleged rapes took place in the vicinity of the villages of Dol Dol, north of Nanyuki, Archers Post, near the town of Isiolo and Wamba, in the vicinity of the coastal region. In more than half of the rape cases, women were gang raped and a considerable number of the victims were underage girls and children at the time of their attacks. The attacks occurred during a period of over 35 years, from 1965 to the present day.

The soldiers often taunt, threaten and cruelly humiliate the victims. They are stripped and inhumanely passed over from soldier to soldier, like cattle, during their rape ordeals, by the entitled soldiers who exploit their diplomatic immunity from the British consulate. They view black women as inferior species who can be sexually demeaned without any reprisal.

Numerous women, who were pregnant at the time of their violent attacks, miscarried immediately after their rape encounters. Amnesty International reported that approximately 35-40 women gave birth after the incidents while others who were pregnant at the time of their gang-rape incidents, suffered stillbirths.

Draconian colonial brainwashing has, for decades, induced the African society to subconsciously deem the rape of black women as inconsequential. This thought process, has been severely galvanised in the African populace and the global psyche.

To the majority, the gang-rape of Kenyan women by British soldiers, doesn't count as rape. The Kenyan population and other nationalities do not take victims seriously regardless of them reflecting evidential trauma consistent to rape.

The Kenyan government and the British consulate have both been bereft of the requisite compassion to undertake arrests of the hundreds of soldiers and provide restitution to rape victims. This is in disregard of the concrete evidence provided by Amnesty International, which has ostensibly corroborated the evidence of over 300 rape cases perpetrated by British soldiers in Dol Dol village alone.

Jeff Anthony is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother