One day, I bought a second-hand phone I didn’t know was a stolen phone. I was tracked down, arrested, and taken to court. My bail was 150 Kenyan Shillings, and since I had that money in my bank account, I wasn’t worried. So I called my best friend and gave her my ATM card and asked her to withdraw the money and pay bail for me. I never saw her again for a very long time. My “friend” disappeared with my money and I remained locked up for 1 year and 8 months, waiting for my case to be heard. The case was eventually thrown out of the court due to a lack of evidence.

That was the most difficult thing to deal with because I didn’t know what was happening. My best friend never came back so I didn’t know what had happened to her. Every day I was hoping she would come back. Little did I know that she had withdrawn all my money and disappeared.

My children were passed around from friend to friend and sometimes would stay with my aunt. They had no idea where their mother was.

Upon my release, I faced a lot of stigmas. Nobody wanted to stay with me after that. I remember going to the church I used to attend prior to being in jail and I asked the pastor to let us stay in that church for the night. He said we could not sleep there and with that, he gave us 100 Kenya Shillings ($1). He told me to go buy something for my children to eat and to go and find a place to stay.

Unable to find accommodation, my children and I began sleeping on the street. If I found casual work for a time I would find a cheap place to stay, but most nights we slept in the street. That is how I was gang-raped for the first time…by 15 men. I don’t know where they were coming from, but they raped me and left me there. This took place around 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning.

I was so badly injured that I needed two surgeries. My rectum was badly damaged because I was sodomized. I went through intense therapy and was going back and forth to the hospital for an entire year.