The untold story of a male domestic worker raped by his employer
Male victim of rape. One Kerundu* was raped by his domestic employer in Mombasa and had been suffering in silence.
What you need to know:
- Male survivors of sexual assault often remain invisible, silenced by stigma, shame and fear of disbelief.
- Kerundu’s ordeal at the hands of a powerful employer left him traumatised and unable to seek justice. His struggle reveals how little support exists for men facing gender-based violence in Kenya.
- Since the rape, Kerundu has lived with crippling anxiety, panic attacks and moments of suicidal despair. He keeps himself constantly occupied just to avoid sinking into traumatic memories.
In 2014, Kerundu* was just 18, fresh from receiving his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results. He had scored a C minus.
His hope of proceeding to college to pursue his passion for hospitality quickly dimmed when it became clear that his parents could not support him beyond secondary school. Determined to build a life for himself, he began asking around for any kind of work. Luck came his way when he secured a position as a domestic worker in Mombasa County.
For nearly six years, he served his female employer. All seemed well, to a point where the two developed a sense of camaraderie. Then, in February 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, everything changed. "She told me the speaker in her bedroom wasn't working and asked me to fix it," he says. "Since we had become like friends, going to her bedroom wasn't an issue for me. I was wrong. She took advantage of my trust."
He found her naked. As he tried to leave, she shut the door and raped him. “After she was done, I saw her reaching for her phone. She had recorded the ordeal. I confronted her and asked her to delete the video, but she refused. She said that it would be her security in case I ever reported her to the police," he says.
Terrified, Kerundu felt trapped. He feared that she would leak the video on social media. He suffered panic attacks that paralysed him. “If my employer found me doing something, my whole body went weak. I'd shake but had no energy to move. Even after she left the house, it took time for me to recover,” he says.
A month after the incident happened, Kerundu could no longer endure the discomfort. He left immediately after receiving his monthly salary of Sh12,000. Almost five years later, Kerundu is still deeply traumatised. “Recently, I fell sick and thought, ‘this is it. She infected me with HIV. I'm going to die.' I only settled after going to hospital and finding out that it was something else,” he says.
He says he cannot allow himself to be idle, because suicidal thoughts surface. To keep himself occupied, he plays loud music, sings, and dances.
Kerundu kept the ordeal secret until 2023, when he finally confided in a friend after feeling he had hit rock bottom. “After sharing with him, I felt better,” he says. “He understood my pain and encouraged me not to judge myself. He reminded me that there are people who care about me. That assurance felt like a weight had been lifted,” he says.
Still, he says he no longer trusts women. He says that he suffers panic attacks whenever he is around women who have a similar age as his abuser. “I seriously need counselling. There are days I'm so low when I think about the rape. I'm not okay, even if you see me smiling. There's pain, anger and bitterness in my heart that I can't explain,” he says.
“Yet I can't report her. She is a well-connected woman and can kill me like she threatened, or release the video. That would just push me to the grave,” he says.
*Name changed to protect survivor's identity.
