• Older women promise boys a comfortable life while they warm their beds.
• In some cases, parents are reluctant to report the matter to authorities.
Older women in Migori are preying on schoolboys as institutions stay shut to control the spread of the coronavirus, an education activist has said.
Migori Civic Organisation Association secretary general Titus Orwa said on Thursday that they have received reports of several cases, including two from Nyamaharaga village in Suna West constituency.
“Wealthy women who are either married, widowed or single have been sexually molesting schoolboys with a promise of comfortable life while they warm their beds,” Orwa said.
In some cases, he said, parents have refused to report the matter.
Nyamaharaga assistant chief Evans Marube said they have taken two women aged 39 and 42 to court for cohabiting with a 17-year-old student of Machicha Mixed Secondary and a Standard 7 pupil respectively.
“We managed to get hold of the two cases because parents refused to allow the union to go through. Villagers threatened to burn down the couples in their houses,” Marube said.
Marube said he had received reports of 13 schoolgirls falling pregnant in the location in the past month.
“But tracing the number of boys who have been lured into marriage has been harder, especially as most parents don’t bother to report,” he said.
The 17-year-old boy's mother said he disappeared from home for weeks, forcing the family to look for him through the media and local administrators.
“He turned up with the 39-year-old woman whom he said was now his wife. The woman was married earlier in Tanzania and was back after being chased away by her husband,” she said.
She said when he was told to end the union, the boy demanded family land be sold for him to get dowry to marry the mother of five whose firstborn is his age mate.
The Standard 7 boy aged 14 allegedly married the 42-year-old mother of his classmate.
“The boy escaped from home and was staying with the woman as a husband,” Marube said.
Both cases were reported to Piny Oyie police post and taken to Migori law courts, Marube said.
The women ill face charges of defilement and other sexual offences.