Raising a child I never wanted — a product of sexual assault

On a cold Friday evening, Catherine (name changed to protect her identity) sits in her modest mud house, wrapped in a heavy Maasai kikoi and a frayed thread cap covering her head. A long dress falls over her legs, concealing the black socks and rubber shoes she keeps pulling up to fight the cold. 

The house, in her telling, bears scars of time and the previous night’s heavy downpour. A gaping hole in the roof reminds her of the six months’ rent she owes her landlord—a debt she can’t afford to clear.

“I need to move out of this house, but I do not have money,” says the resident of Kibra, Nairobi County. 

The leaking roof worsens her asthma, but she cannot afford to move out to a better place. Even under this condition, she still struggles to feed her family, sometimes having to go to bed hungry.

Catherine’s life has been shaped by a series of tragedies. After the 2007 general election, her region was one of those that experienced post-election violence. She has a mobility disability, and this made her an easy target for attackers who gang-raped her. Then, she was 25 years old.

The assault left her unconscious, with physical and emotional wounds that she still carries. “Those people left me with injuries in my teeth and feet. Doctors said I needed surgery, but I have never been able to afford it,” she explains.

On that fateful day, it was good samaritans who found her lying unconscious and rushed her to a health facility.” A lot was going on both inside and outside of the hospital doors. When I regained consciousness and was allowed to go home, I wasn’t given a medical report,” she offers.

When she discovered she was pregnant a few months later, Catherine’s nightmare deepened. The healthcare workers who treated her after the sexual assault did not give her emergency contraception or test her for sexually transmitted infections., she says.

 With no medical report to support a safe abortion, Catherine turned to dangerous backstreet methods in desperation.

“I did all manner of things —took concoctions and whatever I thought could help me that time. I would go with any suggestions I thought or heard of. I was desperate to terminate the pregnancy.

“Instead of ending the pregnancy, I vomited blood,” she says, her voice heavy with regret.

Eventually, when all these failed, she decided to seek antenatal care, only to learn she had contracted HIV. The diagnosis shattered her.

“I couldn’t accept it. I threw away the medicine,” she admits. 

“You see, I never imagined that I would test HIV positive even when the nurses counselled me before they conducted my blood test. I read the results myself and it was difficult to accept what the test revealed.”

Her pregnancy was fraught with complications: tuberculosis, pneumonia, and three months of excruciating injections. 

When her child was born, poverty and stigma compounded her struggles. She tells Healthy Nation that she breastfed her baby despite warnings against it, unable to afford formula. Catherine also says she lacked a good support system.

“There’s something else. I hated my child for a long time,” she confesses. 

“I said things no mother should say. It wasn’t until two years ago, after counselling, that I started speaking kindly to my child.”

The trauma

Now a teenager, her child remains a living reminder of the trauma. Their relationship is strained, defined by poverty and Catherine’s unresolved grief.

“I have random moments when I still wonder why the abortion failed,” she says.

Psychologists call this complicated trauma—unresolved grief over choices stolen by violence. Dr Fridah Kameti, a psychiatrist, explains that survivors of rape often project their pain onto their children.

“Such mothers may discipline with anger or disconnect emotionally, leaving children to grow up feeling unloved,” says Dr Kameti.

Catherine tells Healthy Nation that although the counselling helped better her relationship with her daughter, their circumstances don’t make things easier. “We live a life of struggle, from food to shelter. The thought of our current lives takes me back to that day, and my daughter.”

Her child is now a teenager and Catherine admits to never celebrating her birthday. “It’s a money issue,” she says.

Dr Fridah Kameti says that any woman whose need for abortion services ends unsuccessfully risks going through trauma that ultimately extends to her child. She says that both the child and the mother can heal from the trauma differently although there is no timeline for them to heal. She further notes that they need a support system from family and the community to help them get through the shame, guilt, and anger that comes with having a child from rape or the child being considered an outcast. 

“Such mothers tend to see violence even where there is no violence. They can become disconnected mothers or overprotective over their children because they know that the world is ugly and violent based on their personal experience,” says Dr Kameti. 

She notes that the anger of survivors like Catherine comes in the form of negative conversations that hinder how a mother who has a child born out of rape raises their children. The survivors also feel the wrath of denied dreams that change their lives and how they view the world when they become mothers rather than chasing their dreams.

“If I am a mother who is raising a child whom I bore out of rape, I can see the world very negatively, and I can pass that to my child, not willingly, but by the way I treat this child. How I discipline my child with anger can make my child grow up knowing that I hate them without understanding why because the child does not know that they are a product of rape,” explains Dr Fridah.

According to the doctor, health practitioners can help survivors of sexual assaults like Catherine overcome trauma-related challenges by offering them medical services at their points of need.

“When a health worker finds out a woman was raped, the healthcare facility has a responsibility to inform them that they should get tested for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. It is their responsibility to direct the survivor to a facility that can help them navigate throughout and after the pregnancy so that they know how to be a better parent to their child,” Dr Fridah tells Healthy Nation.

Her sentiments are echoed by the Associate Director for Legal Strategies at the Centre for Reproductive Rights, Martin Onyango, who is also a legal expert.

“Survivors of post-election violence were entitled to an array of reproductive health services, and it was the obligation of the government to inform them and provide those services to those who wished to access them,” says Mr Onyango.

He says that Article 43 of the Constitution allows the right to access emergency care and the right to the highest standard of health care, including reproductive care. 

“Women who were raped and children who were defiled were entitled then to terminate those pregnancies if they so wished. However, that information was not available to them then the same way it is still not available in public health hospitals now, forcing those women to carry pregnancies they did not wish to carry; and now they are bringing up children who remind them of the atrocities that they went through,”

He says Kenya is still not prepared to establish the bare minimum package of healthcare services, including reproductive health care services that should be available to everyone, especially women and girls in times of conflict or crisis.

“In 2007, our constitution only protected the right to life. It did not protect the right to health. However, health as a right was already recognised in various international human rights instruments that Kenya had signed and ratified and so the right to health including reproductive healthcare was available,” explains Mr Onyango

According to Mr Onyango, access to services like safe abortion was available in line with the provision of the penal code that allows the termination of pregnancy to preserve the life of the woman. He says the government failed to provide the necessary reproductive health care services to women like Catherine, who continue to live with trauma and struggle with other health-related conditions that resulted from the sexual violence they went through. “In 2006, we enacted the Sexual Offenses Act that allows survivors of sexual violence to terminate pregnancies arising from rape, defilement, and incest should they choose. The law was available, the services were not, and the government failed to implement the law in favour of these women,” he says.

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