Land, money and lineage: Daughters-in-law speak on abuse, displacement and broken relationships
A sad woman. In-laws’ hostility often leads to emotional and physical abuse.
What you need to know:
- A young bride’s near-fatal attack exposes silent violence, rejection, and systemic failures facing married women in rural Kenya.
- From hostility to attempted murder, women narrate painful realities of in-law abuse, delayed justice, and deeply rooted patriarchal norms.
Debora* says she nearly died in the home she had just joined as a wife. Five months after moving into her husband's family compound in Rangwe, Homa Bay County, she was attacked at night, stabbed and left bleeding, an ordeal she links to growing hostility from her in-laws.
Now out of that home and seeking justice, her case reflects a wider pattern of women facing rejection, violence and displacement within marriage.
The 34-year-old met her husband only weeks before they decided to live together. They agreed to relocate to the village, with Debora leaving her parents' home in Karachuonyo for Kochia, her husband’s home. She hoped to build a stable life with a man who had accepted her despite her previous marriage.
“I have three children, and the man agreed to accommodate them at his parents' home,” she explains.
For many women, acceptance by in-laws shapes how they settle into marriage. Debora expected to be welcomed and treated as part of the family, even if they were meeting for the first time as adults. Instead, she sensed unease from the beginning.
Her in-laws did not engage her in the way she had expected during their first meeting. Rather than getting to know her, they kept their distance. She later came to believe they had already decided she should leave. “I learnt that my mother-in-law wanted me out of her compound. She claimed I was older than her son and wanted him to marry a younger woman,” Debora recalls.
She believes that perception fuelled the hostility she faced.
On February 2, the situation escalated. She was asleep on a sofa when, according to her account, her in-laws entered the house. “They came in and stabbed me while I was resting. She (mother-in-law) used a knife and stabbed me near the breast. She was with two of her children. I woke up in pain and had to get up quickly to save myself,” she recounts.
She remembers being restrained during the attack. “They held my hands and legs while she stabbed me in the chest,” Debora adds.
She managed to break free and run out of the house as her attackers pursued her. A boda rider who noticed her condition came to her rescue. “He noticed blood coming from my abdomen and rushed me to Nyagoro Health Centre. I was later referred to Homa Bay County Hospital for specialised care,” she recounts.
She was admitted for two days before being discharged. Doctors told her the injury had narrowly missed her vital organs. “It missed my heart by a fraction of an inch. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive,” she notes.
After leaving hospital, Debora reported the matter at Rangwe Police Station, where she was issued with a P3 form and instructed to have it filled by a doctor. The form is the Kenya Police Medical Examination Report used in criminal investigations to document physical injuries, assault or sexual violence, with sections completed by both a police officer and a medical practitioner to serve as evidence in court.
Serious injuries
She expected swift action given the seriousness of her injuries, but it soon became clear the matter was not being treated with urgency. “I followed all the instructions and submitted the documents required. The suspects were initially arrested, but it appeared they colluded with police to delay the case,” she alleges.
At least six of her in-laws were involved in planning and carrying out the attack, she claims, yet only three were arrested. The arrests were made over a weekend. She later received word that the suspects had been released on police bail of Sh10,000 each. Officers assured her the case would proceed to court, but the delays continued.
“It has taken a month and the suspects are yet to take a plea. I expected them to be in court within a week,” she says.
What troubled her further was something she witnessed at the police station, officers discussing with the suspects which dates would be convenient for them to appear in court, as though they were being accommodated rather than held to account. “I heard them being asked to choose a convenient date. That made me question whether I will get justice,” she adds.
Although the suspects later presented themselves in court, the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions had still not communicated whether the matter would proceed. At one point, Debora sought help from the county commissioner's office, hoping to push things forward, but was referred back to Rangwe.
More than a month after reporting the case, she had not been informed of any hearing date or meaningful progress. She also alleges hostility from the officer handling her file. “I have now become a bother at Rangwe Police Station. My presence seems to irritate officers there. One officer even accused me of recording his voice on my phone,” she says.
The physical pain from her injuries has made it difficult for her to keep following up. Fearing for her safety, she has since left her home and is staying with a relative.
Rangwe Police Commander Magdalene Chebet confirms she is aware of the case and acknowledges that it was being handled by an officer who has since been transferred, which contributed to the delay. “I assure her that investigations are ongoing. The matter will be heard and determined in court,” she says.
Research by the Coalition on Violence against Women shows that hostility from in-laws is part of a wider pattern of gender-based violence rooted in power imbalances within families.
Getting justice for that violence, however, is rarely straightforward. Law Society of Kenya chairperson in Homa Bay Nancy Nyarige says timelines in assault cases depend largely on the availability of witnesses. “If witnesses are ready to testify, a case can be concluded in less than a year. Where witnesses are not available, cases tend to drag,” she says.
She adds that the transfer of an officer should never be reason enough to stall an investigation. “Government offices are not run by one person. When an officer is transferred, the matter should be handed over so that the case continues. As long as there are statements and records, the process should move on,” Nancy says.
Debora's experience is not unique. Across the county, women face hostility from in-laws for reasons that follow a familiar pattern: they are widows, they have not been able to conceive, or they came into the marriage with children from a previous relationship. In the most brutal cases, widows are driven out of their homes before their husbands are even buried.
Elias Odinga, director at the State Department of Gender in Homa Bay, says his office handles up to five similar cases each month. “Widows are the ones who suffer the most in these situations, and we classify such cases as gender-based violence,” he says.
The problem is far wider than individual families. Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, drawing on the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, found that in many rural communities across the country, widows are still being evicted and disinherited from their matrimonial land, with the process of seeking justice so expensive and drawn out that most women simply cannot see it through.
Mr Odinga notes that disputes often arise over money and expectations within families.
“In some situations, families believe a woman has come to drain resources from their son. Where the man is the main breadwinner, parents and siblings may depend on him. When he marries, they fear that support will reduce,” Mr Odinga says. “In some cases, parents do not welcome daughters-in-law because they feel they will no longer benefit as before. Men need to stand up and defend their wives.”
Gold digger label
Mildred*, a 28-year-old trader, is dealing with a similar kind of pressure. Her mother-in-law has labelled her a "gold digger"—someone who pursues relationships primarily for money or social status.
“My husband and I have been together since 2023, and when he first introduced me to his parents, we got along well. But things changed over time,” she says.
Her husband, who works for the Kenya Revenue Authority, was later transferred to Nairobi, while she stayed behind in Homa Bay to continue running her clothing business at the municipal market.
That was when her relationship with her in-laws began to deteriorate. "My husband used to send money to his parents in Kabondo whenever they asked him to. Now that he has his own family to look after, he says he cannot manage both, but instead of trying to understand the situation, they put the blame on me," Mildred says.
She says the pressure has taken a toll on her marriage. “They have asked him to divorce me, saying I am not suitable for him. Because of all this, I have distanced myself from them and I do not plan to visit my in-laws any time soon,” she says.
While money and resentment drive some of these conflicts, gender experts say land remains an equally significant, and in many cases, deeper source of tension between women and their in-laws.
Hellen Oromo, programme coordinator at Lake Region Community Development, says women are often labelled before they are targeted. “Some are called witches or accused of being barren. Others are blamed for having children of a gender that the family did not want. But if you look at the root of most of these conflicts, land is a major factor,” she says.
She explains that the problem tends to be most pronounced in families where the available land is limited and where in-laws are unwilling to share it with anyone they consider an outsider.
“Women who come into a marriage with children from a previous relationship are especially vulnerable, because those children are seen as future claimants to family land. In such cases, the in-laws would rather push the woman out while the children are still young,” Hellen says.
She adds that in many instances, women are forced to leave before their children are old enough to assert any rights.
Mr Odinga, the gender director in Homa Bay, shares this view and says his office is working with the National Lands Commission to address some of the cases already before them. In Homa Bay, reports from the gender office indicate such conflicts are particularly common in Ndhiwa and Rangwe.
“Widows come to our office seeking help to remain in the homes and on the land that their husbands owned. In most cases, we refer them to court and try to assist them in securing pro bono legal support,” he says.
Land and money are not the only triggers. For some women, the hostility from in-laws stems from something far more personal: the inability to conceive.
'Failure to conceive'
Jecinter*, from Karachuonyo, sells food in Homa Bay Town, where she has lived for some time with her husband, a public service vehicle driver who operates on the Kisumu–Homa Bay route. She says she is being pushed out of her marriage because she has not been able to conceive. She moved in with her husband in Kibiri Ward in December 2020, and for a while, things went well.
“At first I was welcomed warmly at my husband's home. But it did not take long before I realised that my mother-in-law had one expectation above everything else; that I would conceive within the first few months of my arrival,” she says. “Her main concern was that her lineage should continue, and she made it clear she did not want a daughter-in-law who could not give her grandchildren.”
Jecinter says she does not fully understand why she has been unable to conceive, but she does not doubt that this is at the heart of her troubled relationship with her in-laws. “They have never said it to my face, but they go around telling other people that I should leave their son alone if I cannot have children,” she says.
On top of that, she has been accused of having engaged in behaviour that damaged her reproductive health, an accusation she firmly denies. Medical tests have found no blockage in her reproductive system, and she continues to search for answers. “I have consulted doctors and even herbalists, but I have not found a solution. I still hold on to the hope that one day I will conceive,” she says.
Expensive drugs
A gynaecologist she visited advised her to take fertility drugs to help stimulate ovulation, but the cost and the distance involved have made it difficult to follow through. “The drugs are expensive and I have to travel all the way to Kisumu to get them. I am just not in a position to keep incurring those costs,” she says.
The pressure around her fertility has not stayed within the walls of the home. Over time, it has seeped into her marriage itself, with her husband telling her on several occasions that his family is pushing him to take another wife, one who can give his mother the grandchildren she has been waiting for.
Despite the tension, Jecinter still travels home from time to time, mainly to check on her poultry farm, though the visits rarely pass without their own strain. “I have a poultry farm which I must inspect regularly. That is the main reason I go home. Otherwise, I could stay longer in town to avoid the drama from my in-laws,” she says.
When she is home, she handles all the household chores herself, washing dishes, going to the shop and tending to daily needs. When she is particularly busy, she sometimes asks one of the children in the household to run errands for her, but this has become a source of fresh conflict.
“Some of them fault me for wrongly using their children. They tell me to give birth so that I can send my own children,” she says.
It is a pattern Ms Oromo says she has seen play out in many forms across the region. And where children are involved, whether from a previous relationship or born within the marriage, the damage rarely stops at the woman alone. “When women are sent away, children can lose their roots. Some of these cases end up in court later in life when the children try to trace their background and find that the doors have been closed to them,” she says.
She believes that community structures, if properly revived, could go a long way in preventing conflicts from reaching that point. “Councils of elders should be involved as soon as conflicts begin to arise. They have the authority and the standing to mediate between families before things spiral out of control. But communities also need to revive the old systems where neighbours felt a responsibility to step in,” the programme coordinator says.
She notes that the sense of collective responsibility has largely disappeared, with damaging results. “Today, even when neighbours are fully aware that a woman is in trouble, many of them do not bother to intervene or help de-escalate a situation that could easily lead to injury or death,” she says.
*Names have been changed to protect the women.
