'Prayer for the Departed': Tragic end for defiled girl
What you need to know:
- The film, Prayer for the Departed, is based on a true story of a girl who was defiled and later died.
- She developed complications due to unsafe abortion.
When I walk into the cinema at Prestige Plaza on a Saturday evening, my mind is blank, mostly because I have willed myself to have zero expectations.
The film to be screened is of Kenyan origin and based on a true story of a 14-year-old defilement victim who procured unsafe abortion. Due to complications from the incomplete procedure, she died of chronic kidney damage four years later. With my curiosity piqued, I watched the trailer on YouTube but remained passionless. I wait to see how the story will be brought to life.
The opening scenes of Prayer for the Departed, by Dancurf Brown, lead to a courtroom where veteran and acclaimed actor Raymond Ofula plays Musa, a struggling lawyer defaulting on his rent payment. He makes a compelling opening statement for the civil suit, and his strong acting sets the tone for the rest of the film. His clients are two teary-eyed women. We quickly learn one is the victim’s mother and the other is her elder sister. The deceased teenager is named Charity.
As Mr Brown continues to set the scene, we are introduced to journalist Joe (Bilal Mwaura) and his friend, Mike (Lucarelli Onyango), who is doing his pupillage at Musa’s firm. It is at Joe’s house that Mike first gets acquainted with Charity’s story. A disappointed Joe had trashed the article in a bin, saying chasing stories of sexually assaulted women was pointless because mainstream media did not care to tell or give them precedence. But Mike wants Joe’s help. He is keen on gathering evidence to help Charity’s mother get justice and make a name for himself.
Also read: Defilement: The silent epidemic
We then move to Charity’s home. The scene begins with three women at a dinner table. The background music is sombre. The women are Charity’s sister, Diana (Ashley Mureithi), best friend and sister’s mother-in-law.
We discover that Charity has been skipping meals and hiding in the bedroom. She has constant nightmares, which, we will later learn, stem from the defilement she suffered at the hands of her abuser. And when she finally comes to the table, she vomits incessantly. Her woes continue. At one point, she attempts to take her life. Luckily, Diana arrives in time to dissuade her. She assures her that she has the solution to her ‘problem,’ which is an unwanted pregnancy.
All this while, Charity delivers a strong performance, especially in expressing her emotions. We walk with the two girls as they visit a quack for an abortion – one girl, fearful, in a dilemma and contemplating not to continue with the process, and the other convinced that there is no turning back.
Critical condition
Things then go downhill. Charity is rushed to a hospital following her botched abortion. The following scenes mirror the struggles many women and girls undergo to access healthcare services. Her mother is sent to a referral hospital because the dispensary she had first turned to was ill-equipped to complete the abortion or provide post-abortion care.
But even then, Charity’s mother has to give up her goat as compensation for fuel, which an ambulance lacks. She sells her chickens to clear medical bills at the referral hospital. The gut-punching film ends with the Judge, played by Arabron Nneque, awarding Charity’s mother reparations for the material and emotional harm she had suffered.
One scene tries to portray Mike as a dirty journalist bought by forces attempting to derail and sabotage the case. And after the film, Mr Brown admits that he added elements of fiction to make the film enjoyable and palatable. And in many ways, it worked; Mike and Joe, for example, were a humorous pair injecting new life into the sorrowful film. Diana also somehow ended up being Joe’s love interest; coincidence or a small world? Still, she played a role in telling the story of Charity.
I was pleasantly surprised by Prayer for the Departed. The compelling storytelling ignited every ounce of empathy for Charity, known as JMM in a landmark judgment of the High Court in 2019.
A five-judge bench ruled that JMM had the right to safe abortion care and found that the Ministry of Health violated her rights by unlawfully withdrawing the standards and guidelines for reducing morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion in Kenya.
