Calls for action amid cases of intimate partner killings soar
A Form Four student is the latest victim of murder by someone said to be an intimate partner.
The 17-year-old was allegedly stabbed several times to death by her boyfriend who also attempted to commit suicide in Kisasi, Kitui county on Monday night.
The deceased was sitting the ongoing Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams while the boyfriend, aged 27, is a student at Wote Technical College.
A witness said they heard screams and when they rushed to the rented house at Kavasya market, they found the girl lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She had several stab wounds. The man also had a deep cut on the neck.
The country has witnessed an increase in intimate partner killings, with more than 15 cases reported in the last four months.
There have also been other forms of violence with a study by the National Crime and Research Centre revealing that there is a likelihood of increase in family-based crimes and violations partly because of the effects of Covid-19 pandemic.
Economic and work stress
Most of these killings and violence are perpetrated by men who are in family or intimate relationships.
The Kitui killing comes just a week after Interior Cabinet secretary Fred Matiangi’s bodyguard Constable Hudson Wasike shot dead his wife, Constable Pauline Wakasa of Kilimani Police Station, before turning the gun on himself.
Latest statistics indicate that 11 women were killed by current or ex-partner in February 2019. In 2019, 47 women and three men were killed by their current or ex-partners.
Majority of the victims were married and living together with the person who attacked them.
Stabbing was the most common mode of killing, according to a report titled Masculinity and Intimate Partner Violence in Kenya.
The victims were killed through stabbing, strangulation, beating or being shot. Others were left injured or maimed and in such cases, research has shown that majority of them do not seek help from formal services or authorities.
Prior to the alarming statistics, it was already recognised that Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is common and normalised affecting four out of 10 women in Kenya, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
Worldwide, IPV affects around a third of women and leads to a range of physical, sexual, reproductive and mental problems.
A number of contributory factors have been identified at individual, family, community and wider society levels.
Experts say economic and work stress can lead to gender-based violence through feelings of low self-esteem and inadequacy and the need to reassert dominance to preserve status.
The report has identified some issues that aggravate the situation including having another partner, refusal to have sex, refusal to have children or more children, poverty and neglect of household duties.
“While polygamy and extra-marital relationships by men were normalised by some respondents, in comparison, infidelity by a woman was widely noted to provoke a strong reaction of hurt and anger which can result in killing,” the report to the Office of the President states.
The discovery of HIV/AIDS and STIs might also bring suspicion and violence. In one of the cases reported, a senior police officer shot his mistress in a bar before turning the gun on himself in rage.
The officer reportedly had discovered that the girl had knowingly infected him with HIV and when he confronted her, the girl apparently casually brushed off his concern saying: “It is not an issue, there is now medicine for HIV.”
A unique factor noted in several cases was men working away from home and particularly the posting of civil servants away from the family which leads to love triangles which subsequently lead to IPV.
In one of the cases reported, a police officer became suicidal because his wife got pregnant with another man. He had been away for three years.
Unresolved disputes
In the case where CS Matiangi’s bodyguard shot dead his wife before killing himself, close relatives say there were accusations of infidelity from both sides.
Before he pulled the trigger, the officer is said to have asked the wife whether she was leaving him because “she had found another man”.
Due to the disagreement, the wife had moved to a new house behind Naivas Ruaraka, leaving the husband at the GSU staff quarters, just four days before the killing.
Experts say some of these killings are because of unresolved disputes and others to history of violence.
CS Matiang’i said he was “deeply pained by the tragic incident” adding that it was a rude awakening to psychosocial challenges among some of young officers that the government had no choice but to now pay greater attention to.
Detectives say the fatalities could have been more had the househelp not sensed danger early enough and rushed out with the couple’s children, aged 5 and 2. According to reports, at least three children were also killed in the same incidents.
A fortnight earlier, on March 24, a woman from Kamae in Kahawa West, Nairobi county was arrested after she stabbed three men in horrifying circumstances.
The woman is said to have stabbed the three men, leading to the death of one. Police suspected a love triangle.
On February 23, a female government employee, her son and another man believed to be her boyfriend were found dead in her house at the government quarters along Jogoo road, Nairobi.
Police later established that Charity Cheboi 34, attached to the Mathare branch office of the Registrar of Persons under the Ministry of Interior, and her son had been murdered by the man who later committed suicide.
The partly decomposed bodies of the woman and her son were found in bed while the man’s body was in the toilet.
On February 9, a man speared his wife to death following a quarrel over a few sacks of maize in Lawina in Elburgon, Nakuru county.
Wilson Koech, 48, had wanted to sell a few sacks of maize but his wife and son objected.
In a fit of anger, the suspect allegedly turned on the two, first on his son with a machette but he escaped his wrath unscathed.
In another incident on February 7, a man suspected to be mentally unstable brutally murdered his 5-month pregnant wife and two children as his other family members tried in vain to gain access to the house in Mbeere South, Embu county.
David Kariuki Nyaga, who was later arrested, had locked up his family inside their house in Kiamukuyu village before he attacked them one by one, using a sledge hammer.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists schizophrenia, depression and defects due to drug abuse, as some of the existing mental disorders, adding that most of them are treatable.
