The agony of teenage girls forced into early motherhood
By Viola Kosome, July 8, 2025Stacy Awuor (not her real name) whispers lullabies as she swings her two-year-old baby gently, and smiles slowly as the baby begins to slowly close her eyes to take the afternoon nap.
Moments later, Awuor lays her daughter to sleep on a small, tiny mattress before slowly slipping through a bundle of a few clean clothes to dress up the daughter when she wakes up.
Although the episode appears to be a normal interaction between a young mother and her infant in Nyakach, Awuor’s situation is not ordinary.
She is among tens of young girls who have been forced into early motherhood and forced to drop out of school after they were defiled in Kisumu.
So bad are the incidents that some of the victims claim they were violated by close relatives or people they knew well.
This was the case for Awuor, a young mother aged 19, who has now been forced to undertake parental responsibilities at a tender age, without a source of income and with little knowledge of how to take care of an infant.
“My life has been affected greatly since I was defiled by someone I knew very well and had been trusted to take care of me and train me on tailoring,” she says.
Abused and neglected
She says her nightmare began when she was in Form One, during the third term and was only 16 years old. At the time, her mother was unable to raise school fees for her education, forcing her to drop out of school.
“My mother had been struggling to keep me in school and I had to rely on well-wishers during my first two terms in school. However, as balances grew, I was forced to drop out of school,” she says.
As the family pondered their next steps, her mother opted to engage a Kericho-based tailor she knew to train her daughter on tailoring so as to help her set up her own business and help the family that was languishing in poverty.
Little did she know that the tailor would turn out to be a sexual predator.
“My mother was really struggling to pay for my training. She would pay the amount in small instalments to the person who was training me, but that was never enough for him,” she narrates.
She painfully narrates how the man insisted that he must have sex with her, claiming that he would pay for her the Ksh5,000 arrears that her mother had failed to pay.
“One day, he just cornered me and defiled me before fleeing the area,” she says.
With nowhere else to seek help, Awuor says she travelled back home to be with her mother. She later learnt that she was pregnant as a result of the defilement.
After one year, her mother, who kept encouraging her even after her painful ordeal made another effort to take her back to school where she is currently in Form Four, even though she’s still struggling with school fees arrears.
But Awuor is not alone. An interview with a number of survivors of defilement in the Nyakach area, in Kisumu County, unearthed how several young girls who have been forced into motherhood through defilement are picking themselves up.
It is a journey fraught with several challenges as they struggle to overcome the painful experiences they went through at the hands of abusers.
In the same village, Linda Achieng, 16, who dropped out of school at Grade Seven, is living in agony as her dreams of going back to school fade with each passing day.
The teenager is a mother to a nine-month-old infant.
When we caught up with her, she was busy breastfeeding her child but appeared to be in distress. She has lost close friends and relatives and is struggling to raise up her child.
“It is not easy for me. I was hoping to return to school, but my aunt says she cannot leave her work to look after my child when I am in school,” she says.
Threatened and silenced
She says she was attacked by a man who was working for their neighbour as a herdsman. The man was a well-known figure in the village and always presented himself as a humble neighbour.
Achieng says the man targeted her when she went to weed their farm and dragged her into an abandoned house where he defiled her.
While writhing in pain as the man forced himself on her, she tried to scream but the perpetrator told her not to even report the matter to anyone, including the aunt she was staying with.
A few days later, again, while on the farm, the same man came back and defiled her again and warned her against telling anyone.
She however reported the incident to her aunt but the perpetrator denied committing the act when he was asked. And when he heard that he was about to be arrested, he fled from the homestead.
She however says that the perpetrator came back after a few weeks but no action was taken against him despite the sexual assault he committed on her.
“He came with his wife and pleaded with my aunt to forgive him and that they should not pursue the case through the courts. I feel so bad when I see him roaming freely around,” she says.
Aside from the pain of seeing her abuser roaming freely in the village, she confesses that she tears down every day as she sees her age mates going to school as she struggles to raise a child.
Can’t afford diapers
She says she cannot even afford diapers for her child or even clothes.
“Every day is a major struggle. I have been crying myself to sleep on most days, but there is nothing much I can do but just be a mother to my child,” she says.
The plight of the young mothers is made worse by the lack of safe houses to accommodate young girls subjected to sexual assaults and women grappling with Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Nyanza.
In Kisumu County, for instance, several efforts to build safe houses to accommodate victims of GBV have never seen the light of the day, with survivors forced to rely on private facilities.
According to Senator Catherine Mumo, GBV is not only a problem of Nyakach and Kisumu County but a national problem, and everyone in all sectors must be involved in tackling the menace.
“We have lost against defilement, rape, physical and emotional abuse and for some reason or another, the country is going on an overdrive against matters relating to GBV,” she says.
She adds that good evidence that GBV is rampant is the high number of teenage pregnancies in Kenya.
According to her, globally, Kenya is third in teenage pregnancies, while Kisumu County leads in HIV infections.
“Majority of these cases are girls aged between 10 and 19 years, which is a sign that inappropriate sexual activities are happening at the highest level in Kisumu County. When you talk about teenage pregnancy in Kisumu, Nyakach and Nyando are leading at 19 per cent. This is why as a county, we need to stop and think on how to deal with this menace,” she says.
Lack of basic needs
According to Beatrice Odongo, the Kisumu County CEC for Sports, Culture, Arts, Gender and Youth Affairs, cases of teenage pregnancies are mainly caused by a lack of basic needs such as sanitary towels which then makes these young girls targets of lies and empty promises by men, especially the boda boda riders who lure them in the name of providing for them.
According to Steve Kathaka who works with the National Syndemic Diseases Control Council (NSDCC) in charge of Kisumu and Siaya County, Kisumu is among the leading counties on HIV/AIDs with around 53,000 men being HIV positive.
“Kisumu is one of the counties that is having challenges in GBV and we are seeing a surge in teen pregnancies. Kisumu Central leads in the number of new infections among the young people, followed by Kisumu East and then Nyakach,” he says.
Phyllis Chepkemboi, a representative of FIDA Kenya says GBV statistics from Nyakach and Kisumu County as a whole are scary as they indicate that young girls are the most targeted group by sex predators.
“The numbers of children raising children is worrying, and as FIDA Kenya, we are looking at how best we can assist the young girls affected by this menace,” she notes.
She says that despite GBV cases being a growing concern, some affected families fail to report the cases as they fear societal judgment.