Prosecuting Sexual Violence and Abuse
Sexual violence is rarely prosecuted in the developing world. Researchers at the University of Birmingham are exploring whether a mobile app could improve outcomes by preserving victims’ testimonies and helping authorities link crimes committed by serial offenders.
Women in Kenya are now able to report rapes, seek medical assistance, and access counselling using an app developed by University of Birmingham researchers and the Wangu Kanja Foundation (WKF), a Kenyan advocacy organization for survivors of sexual violence. “MobApp” is using evidence-based techniques to collect testimonies from women across all of Kenya’s 47 counties, arming authorities with country-wide data that could help prevent future crimes and bring serial perpetrators to justice.
Obstacles to justice in Kenya
National data suggest that 14% of Kenyan women aged 15-49 are victims of sexual violence, but many cases go unreported. In another survey of younger women, 32% between the ages of 18 and 24 admitted to being sexually assaulted during their childhood. Few survivors seek medical help and rape convictions are rare.
In 2017 and 2018, the WKF handled over 1,000 cases, but only five perpetrators faced criminal charges in a court of law. “It’s almost always challenging to prosecute rape cases in the best of circumstances, but in Kenya it is a whole other level of impossibility,” says Dr Heather Flowe, a University of Birmingham forensic psychologist, whose research focuses on improving the accuracy of rape victims’ statements.
Violence against women is normalized in Kenya’s patriarchal society, she notes, and so “people often have a hard time articulating their experiences as a crime”. Survivors who do speak out are often dismissed and stigmatized by their families and communities.
Research suggests that half of rural Kenyans would “unconditionally” blame a victim of rape, asserting that they “owed” their attacker, or lured them in by dressing too provocatively.
Poor infrastructure and resourcing are additional barriers to justice. Many Kenyans have to travel long distances to reach a police station or medical center, and then face bureaucracy and corruption. “There are many reports of police trying to make victims pay to process forms or put petrol in their car to go and investigate a crime scene,” Dr Flowe observes.
They lack the equipment to conduct proper forensic investigations, but without medical evidence “the word of the survivor doesn’t count for anything.” she adds. “This makes it quite an ordeal for survivors to report crimes or get medical attention.”
App to preserve memory
MobApp gives victims a vital opportunity to tell their story to ‘gender defenders’ in their communities. Unlike Kenyan police, who lack training in how to interview rape survivors, they use evidence-based interview techniques to document the most accurate report.
“It's really important to use some kind of tool to obtain the testimony in the best way possible, as soon as possible after the crime. We don’t want to give the defense the opportunity to say the victim’s memory has become contaminated by it having been collected improperly. We need to preserve and protect memory evidence.”
It can take years for rape cases in the global south to reach the courts. “We need to make sure that 10 years from now, when a survivor finally takes the stand, that their account is accurate,” she notes. “And if policymakers can hear from survivors, then that will hopefully address negative stereotypes that they have.”
As well as documenting the nature of the crime, MobApp makes note of its social and psychological impacts on the victim. Each interaction with police and medical services is entered into the system, to give a clearer sense of where services are falling down.
Crime linkage and serial offenders
Professor Jessica Woodhams, director of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Applied Psychology, hopes that it will help police link rapes committed by serial offenders, allowing them to direct strained resources towards the most dangerous cases.
“MobApp gives us the opportunity to collect information that tells us why victims are vulnerable, and what opportunities offenders are exploiting. By mapping how these offences are happening, and at what time and where they're happening, you get an idea of where we could intervene to stop them.”
In South Africa her research has shown that women are often at risk of sexual violence when searching for employment, because perpetrators approach their targets under the pretense that they are looking for somebody to take a shift at a factory or a farm. “The victim would go with the offender to a deserted area, and that’s where the offence would happen”, she explains.
The researchers are working with the government, police, health care providers, and the courts to facilitate the rollout of the application. “People see the potential of the system to really revolutionize how sexual violence is handled in Kenya,” argues Dr Flowe.
She believes the app could inform similar schemes in other resource-poor countries. Equally, the researchers are learning from rape survivor networks in other parts of the world, with a view to developing one-stop sexual assault referral centers in Kenya.
“We're trying to do comparative work to establish where these centers are working, and why,” Dr Flowe says. “We've got big aspirations to work at a global level, to build the capacity of survivors’ organizations and help people get access to services and justice.”
Documenting sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers
Across the world, sexual abuse has been uncovered within institutions and organizations which are meant to be protecting people.
A United Nations vehicle and soldiers provide protection to a humanitarian aid agency distributing food in Haiti. [Photo Credit: Alamy]
A United Nations vehicle and soldiers provide protection to a humanitarian aid agency distributing food in Haiti. [Photo Credit: Alamy]
The United Nations has acknowledged some transgressions by members of its peacekeeping forces. Research by University of Birmingham history professor Sabine Lee shines a light on the scale of those violations in Haiti and the DRC.
In 2017, Professor Lee, and Susan Bartels, a clinician-scientist at Queen’s University in Ontario, led a team which interviewed about 2,500 Haitians living near peacekeeper bases. About 10% had either had children fathered by members of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), or knew someone who had.
Locals painted a picture of widespread exploitation and abuse. They said the peacekeepers, who came mostly from Brazil and Uruguay, had abused and impregnated children as young as 11. When the pregnancies were revealed, the UN repatriated them to their home countries, leaving the mothers to raise their children in poverty and isolation.
Professor Lee found that the peacekeepers used their power in coercive ways. The women were often paid for sex with meals or petty cash. In other instances “they very actively seek relationships with peacekeepers because they think there is some social capital to be gained from it,” she observes.
Women sometimes think it desirable for their children to be fair skinned. But through interviews conducted by local Congolese research assistants with 35 children fathered by peacekeepers in the DRC and complementary interviews with their mothers, the research team established that “in almost all cases it was not advantageous to have a father who’s a peacekeeper”. The children stand out among their peers and are brought up by single mothers who are often stigmatized by their communities, and whose socio-economic hardship is often amplified through single motherhood.
Professor Lee is now working with the UN to co-develop appropriate training programs for its soldiers, among others to raise awareness of the power dynamics that affect relationships with local women in host communities. She is also calling for the organization to stop sending peacekeepers who father children back to their home countries, so that they can face up to the criminal or financial ramifications.
Professor Lee’s next collaborative project, led by Dr Bartels at Queen’s, aims test the DNA of peacekeeper’s children, to learn where their fathers hailed from. She says: “If we can identify their nationalities, we can have more active conversations with the countries which are contributing forces to UN peacekeeping missions, and say: ‘Your soldiers have fathered children, so you need to hold them to account.’”
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