A man who tried raping an in-law’s eight-month pregnant wife has also reportedly been raping his teenage daughters.
Harry, a casual labourer in Matopeni slums in Nairobi’s Kayole area, has also been accused of turning his wife, Joyce Aluoch, into a domestic slave.
Harry is said to have refused to let her leave the house or seek employment.
Their daughters, aged 16 and 14 respectively, don’t attend school as Harry allegedly claims they are “adults.”
These are the daughters Joyce accuses her husband of raping for the last five months.
The shocking revelations surfaced when Lucia Omondi, the wife of Joyce’s brother visited them and Harry allegedly tried to rape her. The woman, in the third trimester of pregnancy, reportedly screamed and attracted neighbours who rescued her.
Lucia later reported the matter to her husband, Stephen Omondi, who told The Nairobian that, “My wife shocked me when she reported that Harry tried raping her. She then revealed to me that Harry had also been sleeping with his two daughters.”
Omondi then reportedly ordered his sister Joyce to report the case at Kayole Police Station.
She reported the matter and on coming back, Harry allegedly confronted them with a panga for ‘scheming’ to have him arrested. “I then asked Joyce to move in with my family in my one-room house,” says Omondi of the incident that took place in July this year.
However, after two weeks, Joyce reportedly moved out with her daughters and went back to live with her husband again.
Joyce says that, “My children and I were dependent on my brother who is 10 years younger than me. He isn’t employed and was straining both financially and emotionally. Harry promised me he will stop what he had been doing and I went back to him because he is the only one who can provide us.”
The Nairobian visited Joyce’s home, but the family had already moved houses.
Alice Mueni, a caretaker at the couple’s former house says Joyce told her they had to move because she was ashamed.
“Everybody around here knew she was sharing a husband with her daughters. So she told me she can’t stay here anymore and went to a new place where nobody knows her.”
The Nairobian spent an entire afternoon tracking down Joyce’s new house. Even her brother, Omondi, wasn’t aware that Joyce had changed houses. “Now that Harry has convinced her to move houses and live far away from me, who will protect her when he starts beating her” asks Omondi.
We finally found Joyce in her new single room, with a metal door and one small window. It is the house she shares with her six children and husband.
Joyce, a high school dropout, seems to be very afraid of her husband. She only gave us five minutes before asking us to leave. “He might come back and I don’t want problems. He is our sole provider, and if only he could allow me to work, I wouldn’t be relying on him,” she says tearfully. “I can’t even face my family. I can’t look my daughters in the eye. In our culture it is a taboo. It’s not my daughters’ fault. There is nothing I can do. I can’t follow up the issue with the police because this man will kill me and my children,” she lamented.
She allowed us to interview her eldest daughter for a few minutes before asking us to leave. One of the daughters said, “It started in July. My father had beaten my mother. Mum ran away at night to seek refuge in uncle Omondi’s house. She didn’t come back. At night, my father woke me up and dragged me to his bed. He did it several times at night and told me he will kill me if I tell anyone,” narrated the 16-year-old.
The next day, Harry reportedly turned on his 14-year-old daughter and raped her as well.
“I didn’t tell my mother because I was afraid dad would kill me. I told a neighbour who told auntie Lucia who in turn told uncle Omondi. That’s when we went to the police,” she says
When The Nairobian contacted Harry, he was dismissive of our questions, “So you want her and the children If you think you can give them food every day, then take her and leave me in peace,” he said.
When asked about raping his daughters, he simply dismissed the question, saying they are “adult women” before hanging up.