Source: The Star
Sitting on the floor of her one room home besides her daughter and granddaughter, Catherine Adhiambo (not her real name) seems to be edging towards her wit's end.

She says autism has prevented her youngest child Anne (not her real name) from having a normal life. At 18, Anne has experienced only a smarting of an education, she is excluded from experiencing the social and working life of everyday youth, shrinking her world into the four corrugated tin walls of her mother's Kariobangi house in Nairobi.

However, these are not the things weighing down her already aged mother. Rather, it is the vulnerability that comes with this learning disability that leaves Anne exposed to the sick games of others.

"Sometimes when I send Anne to the shops, I follow her. She is absent-minded, she is barely present to herself. If someone calls her she will just go. It doesn't take much planning to lure her away," says Catherine.

Catherine also knows that in a bad situation it is highly unlikely that Anne will give a scream or shout for help. After all, there were no screams and shouts previously.

The first time Anne was attacked in March 2012, it took her older sister to notice the absence of her period months after she was raped. Catherine was in Kisumu at the time, when she got the call from her eldest daughter in Nairobi about her youngest child's missing menses and the test at the hospital that confirmed she was pregnant.

After much prodding, Anne revealed that she had been raped by a man who neighbour's her older sister's house who she was staying with at the time.

"The incident was reported at the Chief's Camp in Kariobangi," Catherine explains. "The man who raped and impregnated her was summoned by the chief and he admitted responsibility for the pregnancy. He promised to support Anne until the baby was born. But we received nothing from him after that."

What followed the rape was a kidnapping saga. A beaten Catherine tells the baffling story of Claire (not her real name), an official at the Chief's camp who works with mentally handicapped children and those who have been sexually assaulted. Catherine says she was supposed to help Anne, but this was yet another person who would enter her life with the intent of exploiting her.

"Claire said she was taking Anne to a home for teen mothers in Murang'a. She took her, then disappeared without revealing where exactly the home was. She told Anne's older sister to send her money to buy things for Anne, the money was sent, but Claire simply disappeared into thin air with the money. Finally Anne's older sister found her one day in a matatu. She dragged her to the Buru Buru police station where she revealed Anne's whereabouts. We found Anne at a home in Murang'a, her leg had been broken somehow. A doctor at the home told us to take Anne away as soon as the leg healed because it seems Claire had hatched up some scheme for the baby," Catherine says.

Following the back and forth, Anne's child was finally born at the Pumwani Hospital. Her baby was a sickly one forcing Catherine to uproot her life in Kisumu and move to Nairobi to help out.

Plagued by pneumonia, crickets and other complications, the baby died barely one year and six months old at the Kenyatta National Hospital on December 23 last year.

"When they called me to the hospital that night, there were no lights on any of the floors and I knew even before they told me that Anne's baby had died," Catherine manages between sobs.

December 25, three days after her baby died, there was a fundraiser for his funeral -- that was the second time Anne was raped. This time by Catherine's nephew -- her sister's child.

"After the fundraising at my eldest daughter's house, which is also here in Kariobangi, my nephew left with my daughter for the bus stop. He was supposed to take a bus to his own home, while my eldest daughter boarded a bus to town to collect some more money for the funeral. But as soon as her matatu left the stage, he alighted and went back to her house where Anne was staying," Catherine explains.

He first attempted to rape Anne's teenage cousin who was also spending the night at the house. But she was stronger and managed to escape to another room leaving Anne asleep on the floor besides her elder sister's daughter, the toddler who sits next to her on the floor as her mother recounts this story.

When he began his assault on a sleeping Anne there were no screams or shouts, it was up to the toddler to alert the cousin in the next room who had escaped a similar fate.

"When Anne's cousin rushed into the room, she asked him what he was doing, and he answered 'What do you think I am doing.' And when he was done, he got up and fell asleep on a chair," Catherine says.

Catherine reported the matter to the police. However her own parents pleaded with her to drop the charges against her nephew arguing that after all, blood is thicker than water.

"I asked my parents why my nephew who knew Anne's child had just died, and that she is mentally handicapped, would do such a thing," Catherine says.

Eventually her nephew was released on a Sh20,000 bond. Catherine did not pursue the matter further but told her parents that she did not want to see her nephew or her sister's other children ever again.

Anne has since moved out of her sister's home and moved in with her mother who now lives permanently in Nairobi. Catherine, who for years worked as a hairdresser, stays at home to provide Anne who cannot speak or defend herself with 24-hour supervision.

"She needs to be in a home where she will be looked after and learn a skill so that she can support herself," Catherine says. "Otherwise, I fear something will happen to her if she doesn't get some help."

She adds that Anne's one and only brush with education was three years in a Christian run institution. The organisation said they would finance her education for three years after which they would live it up to her family to put her through school. Something, Catherine says, neither her or Anne's older siblings could afford.

Sara Jamal, director of the Autism Support Centre Kenya, who has been trying to get Catherine the helps she needs says her organisation sees many cases of mentally handicapped children who have been victims of sexual violence.

Often times these children are from poor families, whose guardians have to choose between working to provide at least a meal for their family and staying at home to protect them from those who might try and harm them.

In the case of Anne, Jamal says that although she is able to walk and open doors for herself, her ability to speak is limited and she suffers from short term memory.

Jamal adds that she is a prime example of a mentally handicapped child whose guardians could not offer her the support she needed as they are working to make ends meet.

"We need to go to the communities and teach them about different disorders as well as sex education pertaining to children with special needs while stressing the point that these children are more vulnerable and need a wider circle of support comprising of every member of the community," Jamal says.

• Kenya