#JusticeForLiz

 Finally after 3 years there is has been justice for a now 19 year old female of Busia County, Kenya known to the world as "Liz". The name Liz is a pseudonym used by the Kenyan press to protect her identity. In June of 2013, when Liz was 16, she was walking home from a family member’s funeral when she was attacked by 6 men. She dragged into the nearby scrub, beaten and gang-raped for several hours. She passed out during the attack, so her attackers, thinking she was dead, threw her into a nearby latrine and fled. She was found early the next morning and taken to hospital to be treated. Her injuries were so serve from the beatings and sexual assault that she had to be treated for spinal injuries and obstetric fistula that she developed as a result of her attack. Amazingly enough Liz was able to identify her attackers to the police and this is where the justice system let her down.

Under Kenya's Sexual Offenses Act, the men who attacked Liz should have received no less than 15 years in prison, however they were sentenced to cut the grass around the police station and then released. What a huge slap in the face to the young and impressionable teen who thought that she was going to receive the justice that was owed to her. What a huge slap in the face to the millions of rape victims that around the world. The civil rights nonprofit Rural Education and Economic Enhancement Program, or REEP, has documented more than 8,000 cases of sexual violence against minors in Busia County alone. In many cases, the Kenyan police had taken no action at. It is wrong to think of this solely as an account of something that is wrong in Kenya. Recent statistics released from the U.S. Department of Justice on March 30th, 2015 stated that only 89,000 rapes were reported this year. The shocking statistic is that 95% of rapes were never reported. Liz's story is painful proof of the way the public conceptualizes rape and why many victims never bother to come forward. The barbaric idea that these women were asking for it by the way they were dressed, the way the talk, or how they act is a notion that is STILL plaguing cultures around the world.

Liz's case caught the attention of a reporter at Nairobi's Daily Nation. The story sparked an international petition called Justice for Liz. In the two years since its conception it has gathered nearly 2 million signatures demanding that the police treat the case as a serious crime and not a misdemeanor. But the police still refused to re-arrest the attackers. Liz's story had become a breaking point to bring the Kenyan government's attention to the victims of sexual violence. So today 3 of her 6 attackers were sentenced to 15 years in prison only after a court order demanded that the attackers be rearrested and charged. The other 3 attackers are still at large with a huge support from people in the community who refuse to give them up.

#JusticeForLiz