Girl tries to kill self in church, school dispute with her father

A Kenya Certificate of Primary Education “graduate” is recuperating at the Nyamira County Referral Hospital after an attempt to kill herself failed.

The girl, 14, was admitted to the facility unconscious on Sunday afternoon after she swallowed poison which, according to the Nyamira Medical Superintendent Dr Sam Ombati, could be an insecticide.

Dr Ombati said the girl was responding well with treatment and that she had already started to talk.

The girl's father, who was at the facility, said the girl had resisted his orders to go to church before on Sunday before she tried to commit suicide by ingesting the poison. (His name is withheld to protect the minor’s identity)

"I had insisted that she had to accompany other members of my family to church, something she never wanted.

He said he did not force her to go to church on Sunday with the rest of the family but on their way to the place of worship, “we heard from immediate neighbours that she had taken poison.

The father said the girl was a Seventh Day Adventist. Adventists recognise Saturday as the day of worship.

"She was baptized while in Class Four and over the last five years, she has been going to church on Saturdays. However, I wanted us to have unified worship on Sundays which she has been resisting," he said.

But even as the father cited religion as a cause for the difference, a villager confided to The Standard that the father and daughter have been on disagreement over which school she would join Form One, a matter the father acknowledged but insisted it was not the cause of the attempted suicide.

The father said her daughter wanted to join Dudi Girls against his will of securing a place for her at St Charles Lwanga Ichuni in Kisii County.

The teenager had scored 329 marks in KCPE and had been admitted to Rangenyo Girls in Nyamira which she never wanted to join.