Nancy Baraza: I’m so traumatised I've sought spiritual counselling over GBV public hearings
The chairperson of the Technical Working Group on Gender Based Violence, Including Femicide, Dr Nancy Baraza, makes her remarks during a public participation session at Moi Girls Secondary School on May 28, 2025.
What you need to know:
- Chairperson Nancy Baraza says children are being subjected to horrifying cases of incest and boys are being molested.
- She regrets that girls as young as 3 are being defiled in their homes and their mothers cannot report because it is considered taboo
For hours, they sat and listened to harrowing stories of gender-based violence until the trauma seeped through.
Now, the 42 members of the Technical Working Group on GBV, including Femicide, have had to undergo psychotherapy to cope with the emotional toll. The chairperson, Dr Nancy Baraza, told the Nation that while the members have sought psychotherapy individually, she had turned to spiritual counselling.
“What we heard was horrific,” she said on Tuesday, referring to the 11 days of full-day public hearings held across all 47 counties. “Children across the country are being subjected to horrifying cases of incest. Boys are being molested. Girls as young as 3 are being defiled in their homes, yet their mothers cannot report it because it is considered taboo.”
She explained that the public hearings provided Kenyans with an outlet to release years of bottled-up trauma, often without realising the extent of what they were sharing. So distressing were the stories that, according to Dr Baraza, some individuals collapsed while giving their testimonies.
“It allowed them to talk about something they are rarely able to speak up about,” she said. “When you start hearing about actual deaths like sex workers and young girls recounting how their mothers were killed in their presence, you realise just how horrific the stories have been.”
She added that in some areas, members of the public were so overwhelmed by emotion while making their submissions that they broke down in tears. “We went to places where people would try to present their views, only to break down and cry because they’ve lived with these patterns of violence.”
She noted that from the submissions, the home emerged as the epicentre of gender-based violence (GBV), including femicide. Addressing this would require “radical solutions”, she said. The taskforce was mandated to address critical areas, including identifying trends, hotspots, and the root causes of GBV, which is traumatising and imposes a significant economic burden on survivors and their families.
A 2016 report by the National Gender and Equality Commission estimated that GBV costs Kenya about Sh46 billion annually, equivalent to about 1.1 per cent of the gross domestic product. For survivors, the financial toll is considerable.
On average, each survivor spends Sh16,464 on medical care, while productivity losses due to serious injuries can amount to Sh223,476. Additionally, productivity losses from premature deaths due to GBV were estimated at Sh5,840,664 over 30 working years. Given the inflation, these costs have likely increased.
