BBC reveals horrific exploitation of children in Kenya sex trade

A BBC Africa Eye investigation has revealed how girls as young as 13 are being trafficked for sex in Kenya, with the help of women known as “madams”.

In the transit town of Maai Mahiu, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, trucks and lorries pound the streets day and night transporting goods and people across the country into Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The key transport hub, just 50km (31 miles) west of the capital, Nairobi, is known for prostitution, but children are also being sexually abused there.

Two undercover investigators, posing as sex workers wanting to learn how to become madams, spent months earlier this year infiltrating the sex trade in the town.

Their secret filming reveals two different women who say they know it is illegal and then introduce the investigators to underage girls in the sex industry.

The BBC gave all its evidence to the Kenyan police in March. The BBC believes the madams have moved location since then. The police said the women and young girls we filmed could not be traced. To date there have been no arrests.

Convictions are rare in Kenya. For successful prosecutions, police need testimonies from children. Often vulnerable minors are too afraid to testify.

The BBC’s grainy footage filmed on the street in the dark showed one woman, who calls herself Nyambura, laughing as she says: “They’re still children, so it’s easy to manipulate them by just handing them sweets.”

Undercover filming in Maai Mahiu with the madams and some of their young victims

“Prostitution is a cash crop in Maai Mahiu; the truckers basically fuel it. And that’s how we benefit. It’s been normalised in Maai Mahiu,” she explained, adding that she had one girl as young as 13, who had already been “working” for six months.

“It becomes very risky when you’re dealing with minors. You can’t just bring them out openly in town. I only sneak them out at night in great secrecy,” Nyambura said.

—BBC

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