Challenges Facing Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse in Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya

This article examines challenges child sexual abuse victims and their families experience in trying to access healthcare services and justice in Kenya. Child sexual abuse is a vice that shocks and traumatizes the victims and undermines the status of children and women in any society. Yet it is largely suffered in silence. The study was designed to investigate challenges child sexual abuse victims and their families experience in trying to access healthcare services and justice in Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Data was collected by use of both qualitative and quantitative research designs with structured interviews and focus group discussions being the main techniques of data collection. A total of 105 respondents between the ages of 12 to 14 years were interviewed. The respondents included: 56 pupils from Olympic Primary school. 17 key informants and 32 Kibera slum community members from four villages namely Laini Saba, Lindi, Mashimoni and Kianda. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. There were various reasons cited by the respondents as being major challenges associated with reporting child sexual abuse. These included: fear of embarrassment and stigmatization, fear of family disintegration, lack of faith with the law enforcers, parents feeling that they were negligent, children fear that no one will believe them and children are too intimidated with threats by the abuser