Sineno....

By Judy Waguma


Sineno has a round, smooth face. Her complexion is chocolate and her smile infectious.
The jolly girl greets us candidly as we enter the rescue center. She is lively, and speaks fluent Kiswahili.

The young girl looks in perfect condition and happy, oblivious of all the troubles she went through. Sineno is not just any other child. She has been robbed of her innocence. She was raped and now lives with the agony of seeing her perpetrator every single day.

Sineno, 11, comes from Taveta district, where she lives with her single mother and three siblings. At the age of nine, a man she knew only as a neighbor, attacked her and defiled her in a nearby thicket on her way home from school.

The little girl finds it hard to talk about the experience. Her face has changed. The former bubbly child has been transformed into a pouting and not-so-friendly person. She is fidgeting with her clothes as tears well in her eyes. The memory is unbearable.

“He grabbed me, pulled me into the thicket and defiled me,” she recalls. The 50-year-old man, after finishing his dastardly act, left her unconscious in the thicket, not caring whether she was still alive or not. The only thing Sineno says she remembers is that the man threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about what had happened.

But she couldn’t care less; she was in too much pain. When she gained consciousness she stood up and walked slowly home. Her mother was livid with rage. Her first step was to report the matter to police, and the man was arrested. She then rushed her daughter to Coast General Hospital, but the medical staff could not handle her case. Her genitals were badly damaged. “Coast General Hospital referred me to Nairobi Women’s Hospital, where I was admitted for a week,” the little girl recalls.

Sineno has now recovered, but she constantly gets rashes and pain in her genitals. She does not know what the problem could be, but she has to be taken to hospital each time the rashes occur. She says her attacker’s case is pending in court. He was released on bond, but still goes to court for hearings. “However, he has threatened that if we do not withdraw the case, the whole family will perish, and that’s why I was brought to the rescue center,” she adds.

Joseph Okwino, the home’s director, says the girl has made tremendous progress. When she was brought to the center, where she has been living since, she could not stand seeing men. “The young girl would set out for school, but would not reach there, say that someone had threatened her on the way,” he points out.

“She would come back with so many excuses, until we figured out what the problem was and put her through a counseling session.”

Sineno is not alone; there are other defiled young girls at the centre. Nine-year-old
Rachael was left to take care of her siblings as the mother went to fend for them as a sex worker, says Okwino.
That night, Rachael says, a neighbor came calling in the pretext that he was looking for her mother. It is at this point that he attacked her. She is till in pain as she struggles to forget the day. She, too, contracted a sexually transmitted disease and has to seek medical attention every so often.
The centre is home to 14 other girls, each with a different problem. Initially, says Okwino, the place was meant for physically abused girls. But today, it receives all manner of cases, ranging from sexual abuse to domestic issues. It also houses teenage mothers.

But Okwino says the center is a temporary shelter, as the girls stay for some time as they get medical attention or counseling before rejoining their families. It is also home to girls whom, the administration, feels are at risk in their own homes. An example is Sineno who is still being threatened by her attacker. Action Aid brings in the children, gives them support by taking them to hospital, he explains. They are provided with food and medicine as well.

He explains that in the area, defilement is rampant. “We also girls who have been defiled by their fathers, strangers and other people known to them. “At the moment, we have a girl who was defiled by her father and she conceived,” Okwino adds.

“We took her in, and now she has gone back to school, we take care of her.”