He told me to undress, I refused—I said, ‘No. What you are doing is wrong.’ He asked me again. I said, ‘No, I don’t know you. What you’re asking me is wrong.’ The third time he asked, he took out a gun. Eventually he gave me a bullet and said, ‘You choose whether you want to live or die.'”
This is how Wangu Kanja describes the night in 2002 when she was raped at gunpoint. She is matter of fact in her description. It’s a story she has told many times before.
It has been nearly 16 years since she was carjacked and violently sexually assaulted as she travelled home with associates from a business meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. The perpetrators ransacked the group’s bank cards and took Kanja hostage, the only woman in the group, in case they had given incorrect PIN numbers.
That was the night she says her world came to a standstill.
“He raped me at gunpoint. His mate was standing at the entrance so I didn’t have a choice, I couldn’t run away. After, I was numb, I didn’t know how to react to it, the trauma,” she said.
“When I came out to speak about my ordeal people judged me. The first question was always how were you dressed? Who were you with? People’s reactions were either to keep silent or to blame me, instead of holding the perpetrator accountable.”
Kanja reported the incident, however, despite attending hospital, police refused to acknowledge the attack as rape. They told her: “Sex is sex,” and labelled it…
Kenyan activist meets with researchers at our University and practitioners at Leicester Rape Crisis
