Seal gaps in incest law to protect families
According to Amina**, their father would defile them and force them to take a bath and wash their clothes at night.
What you need to know:
- National crime statistics for Kenya show that there were 319 cases of incest in 2018; these are derived from court records, thus, do not capture the actual magnitude of the problem.
- Typically, incest cases are resolved at family level, rather than prosecuted in court, letting perpetrators off the hook.
A WhatsApp post presents the case of a mother taking her daughter to Form One. The pre-admission medical test reveals the girl is pregnant.
On probing, it comes out that she was impregnated by her biological father when he was last home before flying back to his job abroad.
The mother phones the father, who doesn’t respond. Meanwhile, the daughter will not tolerate abortion, which means she will be mother of her sister or brother who is also a child and grandchild of her father! The livid mother decides to drown her frustrations in prayer.
National crime statistics for Kenya show that there were 319 cases of incest in 2018. These are derived from court records, thus, do not capture the actual magnitude of the problem.
Typically, incest cases are resolved at family level, rather than prosecuted in court, letting perpetrators off the hook.
The end result is that justice is not done to the victim, who, if a girl, is consigned to carry the yoke of pregnancy and stigma for life. Most annoying is the tendency of mothers of affected girls to ‘forgive’ the offending husbands.
Cultural hurdles
In some communities, children from incest are considered taboo and are either killed surreptitiously or discarded in the bush.
Victims keen on keeping the babies are banished or pressured into exile. Despite the strong moral sanction, the vice continues unabated even in these cultures. Killing the innocent child while sparing the perpetrator punishes the wrong person and encourages recidivistic behaviour.
Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act recognises that incest can be committed by both males and females. In the former case, it is defined as “an act that causes penetration with a female person, who is (to the perpetrator’s knowledge) his daughter, granddaughter, sister, mother, niece, aunt or grandmother”.
In the latter case, the victim is the son, father, grandson, grandfather, brother, nephew or uncle. The scope includes half-siblings and adopted children. One legal conundrum is the existence of endogamy in some Kenyan communities. This implies permission of acts that legally constitute incest.
Clearly, the definition of incest omits sexual relationships between blood relatives of the same sex. Perhaps it is assumed that such do not exist, which is an oversight.
It also excludes sexual relationships between men/women and their parents-in law, which legally do not constitute incest, but are morally repugnant. A clear pattern in incest is that victims are physically, emotionally, socially and economically vulnerable.
Among them are orphans, dependants and people with disabilities. For young victims, failure to distinguish filial love from sexual attraction aggravates vulnerability. This perhaps explains the over-representation of grandfathers among perpetrators, who straddle brothers, fathers, cousins and uncles. Most cases are detected when pregnancy occurs.
Research shows that perpetrators are driven by factors, including sexual dissatisfaction with wives; close social bonds with the victim; misplaced assumption that intercourse with non-biological daughter is not a transgression; and opportunism.
There is also evidence that liaisons with adopted daughters take place during periods of parental separation.
While incest as moral deviance is often attributed to alienation from traditional moral codes, the ignored element is the power game involved. This power, defined as the ability to make things non-negotiable, is exercised over the victim or as an act of impunity on a third party.
How else would one explain the audacity of a mother-in-law sleeping with her son-in-law and the two being unapologetic when caught red-handed, as was reported in a past mass media article?
Manipulation
Power is also evident in overt and covert acts of manipulation, such as a father showering his daughter with additional pocket money and presents, and threatening her with physical harm and withdrawal of support if she doesn’t comply.
In many cases, perpetrators use physical force to get their way.
It is in this regard that Deborah King, a renowned American author, dispels the notion that incest can be consensual. She argues that it is a process in which a powerful actor objectifies and subjugates the target, leaving her with no option but to comply.
The power matrix in our original story revolves around the audacity of the father to have intercourse with, and even impregnate his own daughter right under the wife’s nose.
It is a display of entitlement and control over daughter and mother. It depicts lack of conscience and is displayed in the refusal to pick the wife’s call.
It is further shown in the wife’s subjugated forgiveness mentality and refuge in prayer to opiate herself. It is evident in the fact that the man has created an ambiguous being to be cared for by his two victims.
This vice, therefore, goes beyond crime and morality and should also be tackled as a gender power relations issue.
Dr Miruka is an international gender and development consultant and scholar ([email protected])
