Why Igembe men suffer in silence at the hands of wives
Child rights activist Jennifer Kathure during an interview at Mutuati, Igembe North on December 7, 2022. She has rescued several men who were battered by their wives.
What you need to know:
- Cases of women assaulting their husbands have been on the rise in Meru County, with residents appealing to the police to protect men from such aggression.
- On November 24, a mother of five was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to murder her husband by chopping off his genitals.
Jackson Mutuma* suffered in silence as his wife hurled insults and at times resorted to physical assault, accusing him of not taking care of the family. This went on for several months.
One day when he returned home in the evening, he found his house empty. His wife of eight years had taken all their belongings and gone to her parents.
The couple lived at Mutuati, Igembe North, whose main economic activity is miraa trade.
Mutuma says his miraa business was hit hard by drought to a level he was not making any money, hence the abuse.
Out of concern for his two daughters aged three and eight, he followed his wife to her parent’s home, a move he regrets as it marked the beginning of a life in hell.
Also read: Address SGBV against boys and men too
“I don’t know why I decided to live at her parent’s home, but I think I madly loved my children and feared they would be mistreated. But then she started coming home with different men, a behaviour her mother encouraged,” he says.
“I could not stomach this. I left and rented a house at a shopping centre. But then they started torturing my children and chased them away in the middle of the night. I decided to live with them in my small room.”
False accusation
At one point, some neighbours called the police and falsely accused him of attempting to kill his child, but Ms Jennifer Kathure, a child protection volunteer in the area, saved him moments before he was arrested.
Mutuma is one of the men who have suffered gender-based violence (GBV). In a society where male victims are ridiculed for being “weak”, he opted to keep to himself.
For John Muriungi*, his experience was more brutal. Besides his former wife assaulting him on several occasions, she filed trumped-up charges against him at a police station where he was remanded and tortured.
“She left me with our six-month-old baby and went to fend for herself in towns where she engaged in sex work. After four years, she came back and took away the child, accusing me of planning to harm her and the child. The police did not want to hear my side of the story, so I was put in a cell and beaten up,” Muriungi said.
Ms Kathure says the two men would have been punished for the wrongs they did not commit if she did not intervene. She says many men suffer in silence, especially in miraa-growing areas of Igembe. When the business is affected by, for instance, drought and the recent ban on export to Somalia, their incomes significantly reduce.
Ms Kathure says reduced incomes breed animosity as some women feel that their husbands are not doing enough to provide for their families. She says most people believe that only women undergo GBV and society frowns at men who are beaten by their wives. So, to avoid the ridicule, men bottle it up, with some resorting to suicide.
Police complicity
“Muriungi really suffered because the woman said she was ready to spend money on police officers to punish him. But I confronted her and asked why she was doing that, yet he was the father of her child and she got ashamed,” Ms Kathure said.
The officer termed it sad that police officers, who should protect victims of abuse, were used to intimidate Muriungi. She said when she pointed out to the police that Muriungi was the one being beaten up by his wife, they laughed at him.
“As for Mutuma, I spoke to the assistant county commissioner who had been told of the incident and requested to accompany police officers who were going to arrest him. But when he came with a packet of unga and the children were happy in his presence, I knew he was not the aggressor,” she said.
Cases of women assaulting their husbands have been on the rise in Meru County, with residents appealing to the police to protect men from such aggression.
On November 24, a mother of five was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Maua magistrate’s court for attempting to murder her husband by chopping off his genitals.
*The victims’ names have been changed to protect their identities.
