Mercy Chidi
Director
Ripples International
Meru, Kenya
Mercy, a grandmother herself, is executive director of a project in Meru, Kenya called Ripples International, supported by the Stephen Lewis Foundation. This project focuses on children who live with grandmothers or in child-headed households or children who need protection. Mercy explains, "We started to hear stories from children who wanted to leave home and sleep somewhere else. When we investigated we found that an uncle or a grandfather was abusing the girl. We said, THIS MUST STOP.
"There’s a myth that sex with a virgin is a protection against AIDS. The younger the better – some of the girls are as young as 3 or even 1½. We were desperate to access JUSTICE for these girls, to break the culture of impunity. When a girl took her story of rape to the police they wouldn’t believe her, insisted on two witnesses, told her she had asked for it, or even locked her up and abused her themselves.
"I met Stephen Lewis and took a course in Ontario, where I learned about the Jane Doe case where a rape survivor took the police to court for not protecting her from a rapist they knew was breaking into homes in her area. Ripples’ project collected the names of 160 girls they had worked with up until 2010 and with lawyers from the Equality Effect, they accused the Kenyan government of not protecting girls."
May 27 2013 RIPPLES WON A LANDMARK CASE!
The police were held accountable for their failure to investigate the rapes of the 11 girls used as test cases.
OTHER COUNTRIES WILL FOLLOW
"There’s a myth that sex with a virgin is a protection against AIDS. The younger the better – some of the girls are as young as 3 or even 1½. We were desperate to access JUSTICE for these girls, to break the culture of impunity. When a girl took her story of rape to the police they wouldn’t believe her, insisted on two witnesses, told her she had asked for it, or even locked her up and abused her themselves.
"I met Stephen Lewis and took a course in Ontario, where I learned about the Jane Doe case where a rape survivor took the police to court for not protecting her from a rapist they knew was breaking into homes in her area. Ripples’ project collected the names of 160 girls they had worked with up until 2010 and with lawyers from the Equality Effect, they accused the Kenyan government of not protecting girls."
May 27 2013 RIPPLES WON A LANDMARK CASE!
The police were held accountable for their failure to investigate the rapes of the 11 girls used as test cases.
OTHER COUNTRIES WILL FOLLOW