PART III Extent and Impact of Post Election Violence - Mars Group ...

other areas, sexual violence was an opportunistic act played out against a
background of lawlessness and a vacuum of power that created disorder
bordering on anarchy. In other cases, sexual violence was used to coerce and
control helpless IDPs who traded sex unwillingly for basic needs with the
perpetrators being individuals in the camp, individuals from surrounding
communities (e.g. when women went out to collect food and water), or security
personnel, and humanitarian workers in the camps each of whom preyed upon
helpless women in different macabre ways.
Security Forces
In discussing their attackers, victims of sexual violence singled out members of
various security forces who were meant to have protected them. Two victims, a
50 year old widow, 215 resident of Kibera who had lived there for ten years and
who had children and 216a 46 year old married woman with ten children, who
ran a shop selling vegetables and charcoal described their experiences of being
gang raped by GSU officers to the Commission. They told the Commission the
officers entered their houses under the pretext of looking for the weapons and
young men that were barricading roads and the railway line in Kibera. Another
55 year old woman from Kibera Laini Saba interviewed by investigators recalled
a similar horrendous experience. In her statement she told of looking outside,
seeing that there were security officers, and therefore not bothering to lock her
house. Worse still, as they were security officers, she let them in after which,
they ransacked her house while pretending to look for the members of the illegal
group, Mungiki, and gang raped her when they could not find the group they
were working for . She narrated her life altering story as follows:
“I went to my house. The GSU followed me and said they were looking
215 CW 17
216 CW 18.
for young men who were involved in the violence. They were 3(three)
G.S.U men who got into my house. I had not locked my house and
when they came in I did not bother to lock because they were security
men who were supposed to care for us. One of the G.S.U officers stood
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