Shocking revelations of young school boys becoming victims of sexual abuse while at their homes has rocked a church-sponsored primary school in Makueni County with pupils, parents opening up about the extremely painful ordeals.

The ACK Mtito-Andei Primary School at Mtito-Andei township which has 800 pupils has about 27 boys allegedly sodomized by people known to them where 8 of them have accepted to have been sodomized, while Police and Ministry of education in Kibwezi are pursuing the rest who are in fear of writing statements. The incidents are reported to have occurred at Riverside village, a notorious shanty village with drugs and substance abuse.

The victims either being scared or ashamed if they spoke out, they have remained with both physical and sexual abuse for close to three years. At the recent incident, the abuse remained a secret until teachers at the school started noticing some signs of child sexual exploitation where one boy had been abused until he couldn’t sit well in class, with bruises on the neck. Several boys were lined up for questioning where they mentioned others whom they had met at some of the perpetrator'S houses.

The majority were reported to have been lured by food before the meals getting spiked, becoming unconscious hence sodomized. One of the teenage boys-15, whose real name is concealed was molested by a family friend and a fellow church member since 2017 has remained in bitter-silence since then. He fell prey after his mother requested the man to house him until they get a bigger room. “This was a church member who was ministering in the same choir as my mother.

My mother requested him to house me for some period since we were residing in a single room and he accepted but I couldn’t imagine that he will turn against me,” the boy said Being a young boy in 2017, he would be abused almost daily and it was until 2019 when pain became unbearable and he started violently complaining. The perpetrator identified as Tom after his actions were known went into hiding last year but was recently apprehended while in hideouts in Taita Taveta.

“I am in pampers (diapers), I can’t attend a toilet and even to control myself is a problem. I don’t go to school daily due to this problem,” the boy added As other learners prepare to sit for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), for this boy, studying has been an uphill and he says although he takes some studies in their house, he might not be as prepared as other candidates. The boy’s mother, Mwende, not her real name, says it was hardships she was facing that exposed the boy to such harms.

All went “well” until one day when she says the boy came running in pain and when she checked the boy’s anus had been soaked with an old mattress piece. “They stayed together until one day at around 2a.m when the boy came running and he was only in a pair of underwear. When I checked him he had inserted a piece of mattress at his anal part,” she said Boys being hard for them to reveal sexual abuse, it dawned unto to her that the boy was undergoing sexual exploitation.

“It has been tough nowadays since diapers are expensive and I have resulted to using old tattered clothes as an alternative,” she revealed Although the boy was recently picked by Makueni Women Rep Rose Museo for corrective surgery, Mwende sees the boy’s future to have been darkened.

She believes when the case kicks off, his son among others will be served with justice. Another woman, Mutheu, whose name changed to protect her identity, says she came to know about her son’s sodomy from the school when he was mentioned among those boys who had been abused by the same culprit under custody.

The boy was among the 27 pupils named to have been sodomized and kept a secret due to threats from the perpetrator. Some other parents are still waiting for medical reports to be availed from Mtito-Andei sub-county hospital, others have received results that show the boys were abused while others due to delay in seeking medication showed negative results in their Post Rape Care Forms (PRC).

A genital examination of one of the victims read,” scars at the side of the neck, the anus has healed lacerations as evidence of sexual defilement,” Other victims, and their parents are only left with testimonies in seeking justice, raising questions if there will be adequate evidence to convict the sexual offenders. A child testimony in such cases might be key since children are believed to be unlikely to lie, however, medical and physical evidence remains weighty.