Source: The Star
Leyla Kassim's (not her real name) six-year-old rake-thin frame, neatly draped in a blue buibui, trembles visibly as she relives the despicable experience when she was defiled by her 25-year-old neighbour as she went home from school.

Every night she screams her assailant's name, saying how she will hit him with stones when they cross paths again.

Unknown to her, they may never cross paths again as her assailant was quickly taken to Nairobi by his family after they colluded with the area chief to convince her illiterate father not to press charges and instead accept eight sheep as maslah -- a traditional way of settling scores among the Somalis.

Leyla's case is one among many reported in Wajir County, where women groups say has the highest cases of rapes and defilement in the country.

"It's not a minority issue, it's a community issue," says Fatuma Yussuf, the chairlady of Wajir-based Arid Areas Paralegal Network, an NGO which advocates the rights of the girl-child and women.

Leyla's defilement, followed by three other rape cases in the same neighbourhood, is proving to be a cash cow for local elders and some corrupt chiefs who discourage anyone from reporting such cases to the authorities. They advocate settling the matter through maslah, which benefits them because they take a lion's share of any payment made by the guilty party.

According to a recently released police report on sexual offences in Wajir county, only five women and three girls have been victims of rape this year, a figure Fatuma says does not reflect the situation on the ground.

"More than 98 per cent of attempted and actual rape and defilement cases go unreported in Wajir because of the intervention of these wazees," Fatuma says.

According to women rights activists, most of these rape cases go unreported due to a number of reasons. Poor family background, shame (since a victim is not 'pure' anymore and is not suitable for marriage), trauma, self-denial, suicide or even death.

"The situation has become so bad we are now hearing of reports where these 'animals' use a knife to enlarge the size of the girls' womanhood so that they can be able to fit in their 'things'," a livid Fatuma says.

Our interview is interrupted by the vibration of her mobile phone. It's not an M-Pesa or text message from her family or friends. It's a report about the death of a boy, who had been sodomised a week earlier by his step-father in Lahaley area on the outskirts of Wajir town, as a result of the injuries he sustained during the ordeal.

It's such wanton loss of lives of the young that is now pushing the women of Wajir to threaten to take matters into their own hands after growing tired of the slow turning of the wheels of justice.

"We will start lynching anyone suspected to be behind any defilement or rape case and maybe that will discourage this nasty behaviour," says Maryan Abdullahi whose seven-year-old daughter was defiled by her farmhand.

Fatuma supports this idea, saying "desperate times call for desperate measures".

However, she says the government needs to crackdown on administrators who are promoting the settlement of defilement and rape cases traditionally.

It's a view echoed by the Wajir County Commissioner Naftali Mung'athia, who in an interview with Xinhua, said chiefs found to be colluding with village elders to stop the reporting of sex crimes will be sacked and prosecuted.

"As the government, we have clearly spelt out that there are some crimes like rape, defilement, murder and robbery with violence which cannot be settled under maslah and the law has to take its course," Mung'athia said, adding, "Anyone contravening this position risks prosecution".

* Names have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals involved

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