The rapist next door: Until perpetrators have names, justice will have none
Do you know who lives next door? Kenya has no sex offender registry. No public database. No way for communities to know if a convicted perpetrator has moved into their neighbourhood. He could be anyone.
What you need to know:
- A new study by Aga Khan University reveals that East African media rarely hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable, focusing instead on victims.
- Legal fears, cultural caution, and editorial restraint have made rapists invisible while survivors bear the public shame.
I was invited as a panellist for the launch of a study by Aga Khan University's Graduate School of Media and Communications on how East African media frames sexual and gender-based violence and femicide. The research, conducted across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, held up a mirror to our journalism—and the reflection was uncomfortable.
The numbers were stark: 90 per cent of our stories frame victims sympathetically. Only six per cent explicitly hold perpetrators responsible. Perpetrators appear as main actors in just three per cent of coverage.
I left with a question burning: Why can we name a chicken thief but not a rapist?
The anti-Finance Bill protests, last year, brought this into sharp focus. Women and girls were violated—some while exercising their constitutional right to demonstrate, others opportunistically attacked in the chaos. We reported the trauma, the hospital visits, the shattered lives. We quoted survivors brave enough to speak.
But the men who did this? Faceless. Nameless. Gone.
In the same newsrooms where we debate whether to name a rape suspect—citing sub-judice, defamation risk, family reputation—we publish full names and photos of people arrested for stealing chickens or phones. We give their villages, their ages, their previous convictions. We make sure society knows exactly who they are.
A man steals a chicken, we make him infamous. A man rapes a woman, we make him invisible.
This isn't about vengeance. It's about accountability. And right now, our collective silence is an accomplice.
I understand the barriers. Legal teams warn about defamation suits. Police withhold perpetrator details. Families beg us to protect the accused's identity. Our editorial instinct makes us hyper-careful about victim protection but strangely careless about perpetrator exposure.
But let's be honest: this caution protects reputations over justice. Men over women. Today's comfort over tomorrow's safety.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: media cannot fix this alone. Our legal framework makes it more dangerous for a journalist to name an accused rapist than for a rapist to commit rape. That's not justice—that's structural protection of perpetrators.
Public interest
Other countries have solved this. They treat sexual violence with the same seriousness as terrorism or corruption—as a national crisis requiring national-level response. They've created legal frameworks that allow public interest reporting without exposing media to crippling lawsuits.
We need that here. A public interest defence in our defamation laws that protects media reporting verified facts about sexual violence cases. Not recklessness. Not speculation. But factual, responsible reporting on matters affecting public safety shouldn't bankrupt newsrooms.
We need sex offender registries—publicly accessible databases of convicted perpetrators. Not allegations. Convictions. If someone has been tried and found guilty, that information should be public record, searchable by employers, landlords, schools, and communities. Right now, a convicted rapist can move neighbourhoods and no one knows. That's not privacy protection; that's enabling serial predation.
We need expedited prosecution for sexual violence cases. When trials take five years, the public forgets, media moves on, perpetrators fade into comfortable anonymity. Countries that treat sexual violence as a national priority fast-track these cases through courts. Why don't we?
We need clear protocols for law enforcement on releasing perpetrator information. Police routinely provide full details of robbery suspects but develop amnesia about rape suspects. This inconsistency isn't about due process—it's about protecting men. If police can name a theft suspect, they can name a rape suspect.
We need accountability for institutions that shield perpetrators. When schools transfer accused teachers instead of reporting them, when churches relocate abusive clergy instead of contacting police, when families pressure survivors to "forgive and forget"—these should carry legal consequences. Shielding perpetrators is complicity.
And we need cultural reckoning from the top. When our laws, courts, religious institutions, and cultural practices all protect perpetrators while counselling survivors to be silent, we've built a society where rape is more acceptable than talking about rape.
This isn't about destroying lives over allegations. It's about ensuring sexual violence carries real, public, lasting consequences for those convicted. Right now, the only people whose lives are destroyed are survivors—their trauma documented, their names whispered, their movements restricted because we failed to restrict their perpetrators.
When a perpetrator remains nameless, he remains anyone. He could be a colleague, a neighbour, a family member—and we'll never know until he strikes again. Impunity doesn't end with one victim. It metastasises.
Cultural framework
Imagine if sexual violence was treated like the national emergency it is. Imagine if convicted perpetrators' names were as easy to find as company tax records. Imagine if reporting responsibly on sexual violence carried legal protection instead of legal risk. Imagine if rape cases moved through courts as quickly as theft cases.
Imagine how many women and girls might walk home safer.
During the protests, some perpetrators wore masks. They knew what they were doing required concealment. But even without masks, our systems conceal them—our laws, our culture, our editorial choices, our collective squeamishness about uncomfortable truths.
Ninety per cent victim framing hasn't stopped the violence. Perhaps it's time we tried something else: a legal and cultural framework that makes perpetrator accountability not just possible, but inevitable.
If we can name the chicken thief without fear of defamation, we can create laws that let us name the rapist. If we can't, we need to ask ourselves why a chicken's value outweighs a woman's dignity—and who benefits from that equation.
