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

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they were carrying that they used. They cut my vagina.” 236In explaining the extent of the injuries she sustained after being gang raped by GSU officers, told the Commission237, “...these people hurt me because at my age I had stopped getting monthly periods. These days I bleed a lot. I have a smelly watery discharge and I have heavy bleeding and have sores around my private parts.......I feel a lot of pain in my private parts especially when I am having periods and I stopped having periods. This was caused by the men who attacked me....” 238 In describing the psychological r effects of sexual violence, Ms Obaso explained the encounters of other women who did not appear before the Commission because of fear and humiliation, as follows: “This [sexual violence] happened to many. Some women were seriously violated. They had bottles pushed up their private parts and others had sticks pushed up into their private parts” 239 After witnessing the extent of the injury that her brother sustained, his subsequent death and the fact that his remains had been eaten by dogs 240told the Commission, “I am traumatised. I usually have bad dreams. I keep seeing how my brother died in my dreams. Even as I speak, I fear getting nightmares. I get them every time I narrate the story. …the day my brother was killed, I wished I could die. I walked on the road and I was almost knocked by a car”. The witness also indicated that her nephew (the late brother’s son), one ‘Ochieng was present when his father was being clobbered and mutilated. He has since gone mad. He keeps on saying ‘dad they are chopping off your thing [to mean 236 CW 37. 237 CW. 17 238 CW 17. 239 CW 17. 240 , CW 36 263
penis]’”. 241Some victims of sexual violence were raped in the presence of their family members a situation that traumatised them as well as the members of their families present during the ordeal. After both she and her daughter were gang raped with her daughter becoming pregnant and later having a miscarriage, a witness told the Commission that “[her] children were traumatized,” something which the Commission reviewed as a huge understatement given the depth of the multiple tragedies visited on victims of Kenya’s post election sexual violence. Another horror awaiting victims was the fear of and actual abandonment of rape victims by their husbands and even other family members which occasioned a breakdown of families at a time when the very least a victim needed from those close to her was comfort instead of castigation and additional loss. A witness from Eldoret who recorded a statement with investigators in Eldoret on 6 August 2008, did not report or seek medical attention after being gang raped for fear that her husband would beat and abandon her, which he did anyway. Other witnesses who testified reported being kicked out of their homes or abandoned when their spouses heard they had been raped. 242, Furthermore, when the parents of a 36 year old married Kikuyu woman originally from Eldama Ravine with four children, who had been raped by the Kalenjin men who also killed her husband, heard she had been gang raped and had contracted HIV AIDs, she told the Commission in testimony and in her statement that her immediate family, “… started separating themselves from me, “kujitenga”. My parents would not even use the same utensils that I used. [They] extended the same sort of treatment to my children…[M]y brother, [name withheld] even sharpened a knife and threatened to kill me and my children because we (my children and I) were suffering from AIDS’….. ‘after I got separated from my family members I had been very lonely. I decided to get myself a partner, a person of similar (HIV) status so that we could help each other”. 243 241 CW 36, Statement, Exhibit 36. 242 As the commission was told by CW 15 and17 243 CW 37, Statement, Exhibit 37 A. 264
Page 1 and 2: PART III Extent and Impact of Post
Page 3 and 4: election violence. At the very leas
Page 5 and 6: providing victims with medical, psy
Page 7 and 8: psychologist to interact with and a
Page 9 and 10: Mecca for women. They discussed the
Page 11 and 12: police stations, loss of property,
Page 13 and 14: eceive its “comprehensive service
Page 15 and 16: The people whom the Commission hear
Page 17 and 18: involving the 4 by the GSU, 2 by Ad
Page 19 and 20: at the door, the other two got in.
Page 21 and 22: themselves, but also of deliberate
Page 23 and 24: violence would easily happen again.
Page 25 and 26: violence. As a 40 year old married
Page 27: status and showed them their medica
Page 31 and 32: meant that law and order increasing
Page 33 and 34: Legal issues arising from sexual vi
Page 35: That said, in all societies sexual

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