Alarm in Lamu as sexual predators target boys

As the world scales up efforts to empower the girl child, in Lamu the boy child is under siege from sodomisers.

This has seen families put more effort into guarding and protecting boys from the time they are born up to the time they can stand up for themselves.

According to Haki Africa, a human rights body at the Coast, Lamu records the highest sodomy cases of all six coastal counties each year.

Executive director Hussein Khalid said the figures were a testimony that society and government have disregarded the boy child and failed to protect him.

The worry, however, seems not to be on the physical or emotional damage caused to the young boy when such assaults happen, but the fear that the act will initiate the boys into homosexuality.

Young boys are now forced to stay indoors and only venture out in the company of an adult.

Even when they play outside, they do so under the keen eye of a responsible adult whose job is to ensure the child doesn’t fall prey to the assaulters.

Khalid called for urgent action to protect boys from dangers of being neglected and sidelined, adding that the boy child needs protection not just from parents and society but more so from the government.

He said cases of boys being sodomised, dropping out of school,  delinquency, abuse of alcohol and drugs as well as suicide have skyrocketed in the last few years.

“The boy child has for a while now been neglected and ignored in every facet of life. While we appreciate the tremendous strides made in empowering the girl child, it has to be noted that at that same period, the boy child has lacked attention,” Khalid said.

The organisation has called on state and non-state actors to focus on boy child and ensure equal empowerment and protection as the girl child.

Lamu elder Mohamed Noordin says the homosexuals are deliberate when they target young boys to sodomise as they seem to be on a mission to ensure the number of homosexuals grows.

“Unfortunately for some of these victims, once they have been abused, their sexual orientation is altered and they equally become like their abuser and the cycle is very unpleasant. That's why parents have been asked to taken personal responsibility for their sons,” he said.

He says the thought that their son might turn out to be a homosexual scares many parents into keeping a close eye on their sons.

“My younger sons can never go out alone unless I, their elder brothers or sisters are around to accompany them. It just takes a few seconds for these evil men to snatch your son and turn him into something else,” Noordin said.

Lamu community mobiliser Muhdin Omar says most of the young homosexuals in Lamu island for instance, were sexually assaulted and initiated into the habit.

“I know of about four boys in my neighbourhood who were promising but once they were abused, their lives changed and they are now homosexuals,” he said.

He said the cycle is hard to break but the community was trying to unhinge all the avenues used by the assaulters to keep their sons safe and for them to remain men.

Fatma Abubakar, 24, was born Faisal Abubakar and reveals that he was sodomized by a neighbour when he was in primary school aged eleven.

“That marked the turning point in my life. I found myself gravitating romantically towards boys instead of girls. I hated it and fought it off for some years until I had to accept that, that was what I had become because of what I underwent,” he said.

She now identifies as a woman and even dresses and behaves like one and says she is not ashamed of what she became, even though she broke her mother’s heart as she had always wanted a son who would sire her some grandchildren.

“My mother has since accepted it and this is how I want to be seen and known. As a girl in a boy’s body. My voice, my body and what happened to me when I was young shouldn’t be used to judge my sexual orientation,” she says.

It's equally concerning that cases of sodomy on young boys are rarely reported for fear that the boy and his family will be stigmatised and that he might not be able to meet a mate in the future.

“Not many families want to marry off their daughter to someone knowing he has been sexually assaulted by another man for fear that he might not satisfy the girl sexually as his feelings can easily shift to fellow men,” Mohamed Ali of Faza island said.

-Edited by SKanyara