•The app can be downloaded from google play store
•The ‘SV_CaseStudy’ app to encourage victims to make reports after it emerged most fear doing so for fear of being stigmatised.
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
Victims of sexual violence can now make a report through a mobile application.
The ‘SV_CaseStudy’ app which can be downloaded from Google play store has been launched to encourage victims to make reports after it emerged most fear doing so for fear of being stigmatised.
The app will also make it easy to document and track the cases that have been reported. Currently, it is feared that many sexual violence cases go unreported due to fear.
“I went through rape myself in 2002 hence the need to develop incentives that work for us and restore our dignity,” Wangu Kanja from the Wangu Kanja Foundation said.
She said it will help survivors to access justice in a timely manner.
“Survivors are stigmatised and discriminated hence the need to develop an innovative way to report and document,” she noted.
Stanley Mutuma from the Judiciary encouraged the public to come out and speak whenever they face any form of sexual violence even though we live in a society full of stigma.
"As a man, husband and father I challenge you to tame the wave of toxic masculinity that sweeps through our society,” Interior CAS Patrick Ole Ntutu said.
According to statistics, one in three women and girls in Kenya experience some form of sexual violence before the age of 18 years.
Some 5,490 rapes were reported in Kenya in 2016, up 3 per cent on the previous year, the latest police statistics show.
A 2014 study by the National Crime Research Centre found that only 15 per cent of women and girls who had been sexually violated reported it to the police.
But women’s rights campaigners say the data is a gross underestimate as many victims do not report sexual offences, fearing they will face shame and stigma in the largely patriarchal and conservative east African nation.