Defilement by any other name is still defilement

Lover. This one of the most misused words in defilement cases. The word “lover” in reference to a sexual relationship where the girl or boy in question is a child sanitises, normalises and romanticises what should otherwise be condemned in the strongest of terms.

The question of consent cannot be answered within the limits of a short opinion piece. Especially in a patriarchal society like Kenya where it took international outcry for a justice minister (Kiraitu Murungi) to apologise for commenting (in 2005) that donors penalising Kenya for something it was already tackling was “like raping a woman who is already too willing”.

In a scene eerily reminiscent of Mr Murungi’s utterances, High Court Judge Said Chitembwe, a contender in the race for the Chief Justice’s position, defended his 2016 ruling where he set free 24-year-old Martin Charo in a defilement case involving a 13-year-old girl on a live TV interview on April 12.

Patriarchal society

In the Kenya Law Report, part of his judgment filed reads: “... she was behaving like a full grown-up woman who was already engaging and enjoying sex with men. She seems not to have been complaining about the incident. She had only gone to the appellant’s house to have sex and go back home only for her brothers to interfere.”

It’s baffling that a man who had an extraordinary licence to straddle the boundary between what’s lawful and socially just instead chose to pander to the whims of a patriarchal society, where a 13-year-old girl, whose hormones are still doing gymnastics is deemed “too willing”.

“The number of magistrates who have called me to say ‘thank you, you have freed us from the shackles of the Sexual Offences Act’ is high,” said Justice Chitembwe during the interview.

No surprises there

That’s what happens when defilement mutates into socially acceptable terms like “lover”. The word tumbles too readily from the mouths of men and women. When a girl or boy is defiled, love is not in the picture. It doesn’t matter if the girl knocked on the adult’s door “asking for it” or if she “seemed to enjoy it”.

The tsunami of teenage pregnancies, especially during the Covid-19 crisis, clearly shows that the word “lover” here is unhelpful. Were these girls also “too willing”? No. They were preyed on by sexual predators who posed as “lovers”.

That child marriages exist to date is also proof that some people believe a seven-year-old girl can be the lover of a 50-year-old man. And the poor little girl, who’s been brought up to believe that her value lies in her marriageability, will stay in the marriage until she dies or is rescued. Is she “too willing,” too?

To endorse a relationship between a man or woman and a minor is to endorse defilement and rape. There can’t be two ways about it.

[email protected]; @FaithOneya