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- Author, Njeri Mwangi
- Author's title, BBC Africa Eye Maai Maai
- Author, Tamasin fed
- Author's title, BBC Africa Eye
A BBC Research Africa Eye has revealed how women, known as “Madames”, have involved girls up to 13 years in prostitution in Kenya.
In the city of Transit de Maai Mahiu, in the Kenyan rift valley, trucks and vans travel the streets day and night transporting merchandise and people through the country to Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan of the South and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
This important transport center, located only 50 km east of the capital, Nairobi, is known for prostitution, but it is also a cultivation of sexual abuse of minors.
Two covert researchers, getting through sex workers who wanted to learn to be “Madames”, months spent this year infiltrated in the city's sex trade.
Their secret filming reveals two different women who claim to know that it is illegal and then present to the researchers to minor girls in the sex industry.
The BBC delivered all its evidence to the Kenyan police in March. The BBC believes that “Madames” have changed location since then. Police said the women and girls who film could not be located. To date there has been no arrest.
The convictions are rare in Kenya. For the prosecutions to succeed, the police need the testimonies of the girls. Often, vulnerable minors are too afraid to testify.
The granulated images of the BBC filmed on the street in the dark showed a woman, who calls himself Nyambura, laughing while saying: “They are still girls, so it is easy to manipulate them simply giving them candy.”
“Prostitution is a commercial crop in Maai Mahiu; the truckers basically feed it. And this is how we benefit. It has been normalized in Maai Mahiu,” he explains, adds that she has a girl of just 13 years old who has been “working” six months.
“It becomes very risky when you deal with minors. You can't open them openly in the city. I only take them out at night with a lot of stealth,” says Nyambura.
The act of prostitution consented to by an adult is not explicitly typified as a crime in Kenyan national legislation, but is prohibited by many municipal ordinances. It is not prohibited in Maai Mahiu, which is part of Nakuru County.
According to the Criminal Code, it is illegal to live on prostitution profits, either as a sex worker or as a third party that facilitates or benefits from prostitution.
Traffic or sale of children under 18 is punished with prison sentences between 10 years and life imprisonment.
When asked if customers had a condom, Nyambura said they normally made sure they had protection, but that some no.
“Some children want to win more (that's why they don't use them). Others force (not to use them),” he says.
At another meeting, he led the research undercover to a house where three young girls were hurried on a sofa and another in a hard back chair.
Nyambura then left the room, giving the researcher the opportunity to speak alone with the girls.
They described how they sexually abused them daily.
“Sometimes you have sex with several people. Customers force you to do unimaginable things,” says one of the girls.
There are no recent statistics on the number of children forced to work in the sex industry in Kenya. In 2012, the National Report of the United States Department of Human Rights Practices in Kenya cited an estimate of 30,000, a figure from the Kenyan government and the already disappeared non -governmental organization (NGOs) to eradicate child prostitution in Kenya.
Other studies have focused on specific areas, especially along the country's coast, known for its tourist centers. A 2022 report for the NGO World Fund to end modern slavery revealed that almost 2,500 children were forced to exercise sex work in Kilifi and Kwale counties.
A second covert researcher won the confidence of a woman who called himself Cheptoo and held multiple meetings with her.
He said that selling girls allowed him to “make a living and be comfortable.”
“You carry out this type of business with great secrecy because it is illegal,” he said.
“If someone says that a young woman wants, I ask him to pay me. We also have our usual customers who always return to them.”
Cheptoo took the researcher covert to a club to meet four of her girls. The youngest said he was 13 years old. The others said they had 15.
He sincere about the benefits he obtains from them, saying that for every 3,000 Kenyan Chelines (US $ 23) that girls deliver, their part was 2,500 chelines (US $ 19).
In another meeting, in a house in Maai Mahiu, Cheptoo left the researcher under solo with two minor girls.
One of them told him that, on average, he had sex with five men a day.
When asked what happened if he refused to have sex without a condom, he replied that he had no choice.
“I have to (practice sex without a condom). They will throw me away and I have no where I am running out. I am an orphan.”
The sex industry in Kenya is a complex and murky world in which both men and women participate to facilitate child prostitution.
It is not known how many children are forced to work in the sex industry in Maai Mahiu, but in this small city of about 50,000 inhabitants it is easy to find them.
A former sex worker, known as “Baby Girl”, now offers refuge in Maahiu to girls who have escaped sexual abuse.
This 61 -year -old woman worked in the sex industry for 40 years, and was found for the first time on the street when she was just over twenty years old. She was pregnant and carried her three young children after fleeing from her husband for domestic violence.
At the wooden table in his kitchen, in a luminous hall located at the entrance of his house, he presented four young people who were forced to work in the sex industry by the Mames of Maai Mahiu when they were girls.
All shared similar stories of broken families or ill -treatment at home: they arrived in Maai Mahiu to escape, only to suffer violent abuses again.
Michelle described how, at age 12, he lost his parents because of HIV and was evicted to the street, where he met a man who gave him a place to live and began to sexually abuse her.
“I literally had to pay him with my body to educate myself. I reached the limit, but I had no one,” he says.
Two years later, a woman who turned out to be a Madame in Maai Mahiu approached her and forced her to exercise sex work.
Lilian, who is now 19, also lost his parents very young. He stayed with an uncle who filmed her in the shower and sold the images to his friends. Voyeurism soon became rape.
“That was my worst day. Then I was 12 years old.”
When she escaped, she was raped again by a truck driver who took her to Maai Mahiu. There, like Michelle, she was approached by a woman who forced her to work in the sex industry.
The short life of these young women has been fed by violence, abandonment and abuse.
Now, welcomed by Baby Girl, they are learning new skills: two in a photography study and two in a beauty salon.
They also help Baby Girl in their dissemination work in the community.
Nakuru County has one of the highest rates of HIV infection of Kenya, and Baby Girl, supported by the USAID US help agency, has the mission of educating people about the risks of unprotected sexual relations.
He has an office at the Karagita Health Center, near Lake Naivasha, where he works by providing condoms and advice.
However, with the decision of US President Donald Trump to withdraw USAID financing, his dissemination programs are about to stop.
“As of September we will run out of work,” he told the BBC World Service, adding how worried he was for the young people and girls who depend on it.
“You see how vulnerable these children are. How would they survive alone? They are still healing.”
The US government did not respond to the comments of this research on the probable impact of its financing cuts. USAID officially closed last month.
For now, Lilian is focused on learning photography and recovering from abuse.
“I'm no longer afraid, because Baby Girl is there for me,” he said. “She helps us bury the past.”
*This article was written and edited by our journalists with the help of an artificial intelligence tool for translation, as part of a pilot program.
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