*Last week, a brave survivor of a seven hour gang rape ordeal opted to have an open court session so as to break the stigma and shame that comes with it.

This is the story of Charlotte Campbell Stephens, 34, a Volunteer from Australia working in Kenya for African LEAF (Love, Education, Acknowledge and Feed) an organisation that caring for orphans and vulnerable children, AS TOLD to Susan Mwangi.

I was alone in the house with the four men and they kept demanding for the money. They then took me to the lounge room and then to the kitchen, where they started drinking the sodas and eating the food I had in my house.

Then one of the men who were wearing a yellow cap sat in the lounge and started looking at me in a certain way and I knew what was going to happen.

He started rubbing my legs and put his hands between my legs, then asked me to accompany him upstairs into the bedroom. He shut the door. I looked straight at him with my back to the window.

He loaded and clicked his gun and said, “Take your pants off”. I pleaded with him that I was trying to help people here and did not understand why he was doing this to me.

He then clicked the magazine again and asked me to take my pants off. I did that only after he put the gun under my chin and threatened to shoot me.

I got into the bed and took off my pants, his gun held at my temple. He asked me if I was HIV positive and I said no, he then proceeded to rape me without a condom.

While he was doing that, the second man in a leather jacket walked into the room. I lied that something was wrong with me and for his own safety, he should use a condom.

He asked where he could get one and I told him I did not know and asked him to go and look for it somewhere since we were in a man’s bedroom. He walked away and came back with a lot of condoms and put some on.

While he was raping me, a third man came in and lay on the bed. He made me masturbate him and tried to get me to perform oral sex with him. I couldn’t.

The second man got off and the third one came on me and I told him to put on a condom as well. He rolled it the wrong way and I had to put it on for him. He raped me.

Another colleague of theirs walked into the bedroom smiled and walked out. And then a fourth guy came in and stood behind my head, making it difficult for me to see him.

At that time many things run through my mind. I thought I was going to get killed, perhaps get my throat slit. I wasn’t quiet sure of what was going to happen.

The third man got off and the forth one put on a condom and raped me as well.

By the end of it all my legs were shaking and I was upset. I got off the bed and asked him if I could just put my pants on and he said yes. He gave me my pants and I did just that.

They then dragged me to the main house. When I got there I saw the owner of the house was sitting tied up on the floor. Her two askaris, and a cook were also on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs and their feet bound.

Her house help was nowhere to be seen. I wondered where she was since I had sent her a simple text message (SMS) earlier in the day and I knew she was at work that day. Later I found out she was also raped.

We were kept there for seven and a half hours and tormented beyond belief.

One of the gang members asked me if I practiced martial arts and made a lot of weird comments. He asked if I knew a good lawyer. I asked him what I needed a good lawyer for and he replied that he needed a good lawyer when I take to the witness box.

This led to a discussion about the law here and how much they would get for violent robbery and rape. They laughed and joked about this and were quiet condescending.

They seemed to know that their time was coming to an end. And he actually said to me that he knew he had two years to live because he was going to be arrested. He is still on the loose.

We sat in the room for hours and we could hear them discussing in Kiswahili where else to rob in that area. We live in an isolated place and the nearest neighbours are about five to 10 kilometers away.

After a while, the gang started panicking, then left the house. We heard a car take off.

We sat there for about one and a half hours before we took a panga that had been in the room and cut the ropes used to tie us.

We took off to the car and the keys were not there. I then ran through the bushes to the Rudolf Steiner school where my friends were.

I hurried as I was so petrified of contracting HIV and the house help, who was also raped, had gone into shock. We needed to get to the Nairobi Women’s hospital to be checked.

We got the car, picked the house girl and drove to the Gender Violence Recovery unit at the Nairobi Women’s hospital where we had a thorough medical check up and given emergency contraceptive, the morning after pill, to avoid pregnancy and post exposure prophylaxes (PEP) antiretroviral drugs to protect us from HIV infection. The drugs were to be taken for 28 days.

Taking the drugs was like going through chemotherapy. I vomited continuously and my head span. They made me have empathy for the HIV positive women who I work with and who take the antiretroviral drugs on a daily basis and who struggle to have a meal every day, yet they go on about their duties when I was flat out from the effects of the drugs.

I pitied them for I know that some women actually stop taking the drugs before the 28 days are over.

While at the hospital, five more women came in and all had been raped. Every time another woman walked in, I kept saying “No!”. I asked the doctor and he said it happens all the time.

This made me so angry because I deal with these kinds of things in Kawangware where I work and not once had anyone told me about PEP. I asked him why this was not available to the women in the slums and why it was not said everywhere in the bill boards about PEP yet rape cases were increasing in this country.

Women ought to know that they can get these drugs within 72 hours in the safety of a clinic despite the stigmatization that comes with being a rape victim.

That is why we started the 72 Hour Campaign to help women get this critical information through the radio and TV as well as educating people about availability of the treatment at Nairobi Women’s Hospital, Kenyatta Hospital, Riruta Satellite clinic in Kawangware, Thika and other centres around the country.”

The 72 Hour Campaign is based on the 95 per cent chance of remaining negative if one takes PEP within 72 hours of being raped.

“Besides the hospital, I had to give my statement to the police who would flirt with me till I had to tell them to stop.

When the police caught one of the culprits I had to go into the cell to identify him and I thought there would be a glass between me and him. Only to find that in the cell there were nine men. It was the most horrifying experience for me, standing in front of him.

It is really important that the government here do something about protecting the victim. Rape victims are so petrified after going through the ordeal and to face the man who did that to you in that way is terrifying.

Before I would ask myself what I would do if I was being raped after reading about rape victims, I always thought the first thing would be to fight back, but when you have got a cold pistol pointed on your head, you just don’t fight.

That is why I tried to personalize myself with these people so that they don’t see me as an object and it helped us a lot.

So far I have gone for counseling to deal with my anger as I knew I was going to confront them in the cell and did not know how to react.

I still don’t understand why someone would rob and take another step to rape someone.

I went public because I felt that I had a voice and courage which many women here still don’t have. The silence about rape is huge and that is why rape cases continue to rise and if people don’t speak about it, it will keep on happening and some men will think it is alright to do.

The rape that I underwent was an expression of men expressing their power over women and with a gun that power is enhanced.

And so when I saw some of the men in the line up, they cowed away from me and I told them they were cowering away from a woman because they did not have a gun. Does the gun make you a man? No, real men don’t rape.”

*The case is now in court.

---