Anger, Shock as Moi Girls Nairobi students raped

Education CS Amina Mohamed arrives at Moi Girls School last night. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

How a stranger accessed a school and raped some girls in the dead of night is the question parents, teachers and detectives are asking themselves after Moi Girls School found itself in the news for the wrong reasons again.

By the time of going to press, there was controversy over the exact number of girls raped on Friday night, with conflicting reports placing it as either one or three.

Also unclear is whether the act took place at 12 midnight or 5.00am yesterday morning. It also emerged that the school had asked the students to keep quiet about the rape incident, which managed to keep it under wraps until evening when the news broke out.

Students said they had been asked to go to class and go on with their normal activities. They said they were instructed not to talk about the incident.

“We have been told to act as if it is a normal day. We haven’t been told anything and we are really traumatised. We cant go to the hostels,” one of the students said last night.

“We are really shocked the school told us that we were spreading fake news,” lamented another student.

Kilimani OCPD Michael Muchiri said they were still pursuing some leads and could not comment on the matter.

“We are still following some leads and the school administration is cooperating in the investigation,” he said.

“Probably we will get more information so that we can establish the truth of these allegations and the depth of the issues at hand. As we get more information we will be able to brief you but right now this the only thing we can tell you,” he said.

Detectives from Kilimani police station and Nairobi County police headquarters have been assembled to investigate the shocking incident.

Dressed as a woman

Those in the know say one of the issues detectives are probing is whether the rapist was an outsider or whether the act was carried out by someone who works within the school.

Yesterday, students held protests within the school demanding protection. Among the items collected by detectives from the scene of crime was a buibui thought to have been dropped by the rapist. There were claims that the rapist was dressed as a woman to avoid detection.

A meeting between the school administration and the board yesterday agreed to send the students home today morning. Distraught parents camped outside the school as news broke, demanding to know whether their children were safe.

Some of them were asking to take their daughters home, but the school’s administration stuck to their guns. The parents were finally let in shortly after 8.00pm and ushered into a meeting with the school administration that went on late into the night. Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang and Nairobi Woman Representative Esther Passaris arrived at the school a few minutes before 9pm and joined in the meeting.

At some point, there was a scuffle between the police and the parents who were insisting they would not go home without their children. One of the parents whose daughter was affected in a fire incident at the school in September last year said he was very traumatised.

“It is very strange that a person can break into a girls school and rape girls when we as parents are not even allowed to get into the dormitories,” the parent, whose daughter is in form two, said.

Reports say attacker was dressed as a woman and that one of the girls was on her way to Muslim morning prayers when she was accosted. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

Security fears

But speaking to Sunday Standard, Education PS Belio Kipsang said there was no need to panic as they await results of tests done on one of the girls to be released.

“I am aware parents are at the school demanding to take their girls home but the situation is under control,” said the PS.

“There is no need to panic as we await the results,” he said.

Spread over 42 acres and sandwiched between the sprawling Kibera slums and Woodley estate, Moi Girls is protected by Lavington Security and has 10 guards with two dogs at any given night. How a man was able to gain access and rape some girls without being detected is anyone’s guess.

It is said the man reportedly raped the girls inside a toilet of a dormitory known as Iten before escaping into the darkness. One of the affected girls, a form two student, received treatment at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital yesterday morning before being sent to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) for tests.

The fate of the other two girls is unknown.  

The school’s administration insists only one girl was raped as she went for morning Muslim prayers, but parents claimed the school was downplaying the matter.

The school’s chairman Wesley Misoi told Sunday Standard it was not possible for one man to rape three girls.

“One person cannot rape three girls and they keep quiet unless it was organised,” he said. “It could either be a person from outside or inside, but for one gain access up to the dormitory is something I cannot understand,” he said.

The school’s chair claimed they had recently held a meeting over the fear of insecurity in the school and had informed the police over encroachment of their boundaries.

This is after a demolition near the one side of the school’s boundary allowed a number of garages to move so close to the wall. He also said the school’s boundary with Kibera had been breached.

The incident, which has once again thrust to the limelight what was once a very popular school, comes just eight months after a night fire ignited by one of the students left 10 girls dead and several others nursing injuries.