For an investigation to be initiated, a woman victim has to report the crime to the police. Her statement regarding the alleged abuse should be recorded in the Occurrence Book held in each police station. However, the majority of police officers are not trained in gender issues or how to handle cases of domestic violence, especially marital rape. Most police officers regard violence within the home as a domestic matter, and enforce and uphold discriminatory attitudes against women. In August 2001 the Kiambu Divisional Police Chief, Mr Njue Ngagi, reportedly freed a church leader, arrested on suspicion of the crime of defilement of a six-year-old girl, because he was a ''married man with children and, therefore, incapable of committing such an offence.''

Women who seek police intervention are often embarrassed, ridiculed, verbally abused and made to feel as if they are wasting police time. In many of the interviews carried out by Amnesty International, women said that they were reluctant to approach the police and had only reported their case when the violence had become so extreme that they needed intervention to protect their lives.

There are fears among local women's activists and victims that the offence of rape is subject to less vigorous police investigation than other crimes and, therefore, that victims are less inclined to report such crimes to the police.

As well as reporting the offence to the police, the woman victim must obtain a Medical Examination Report - otherwise known as a P3 form - from the police station before she can be examined by a doctor. The P3 form is a document that is used by victims to detail acts of torture and ill-treatment committed against them. The form is divided into two sections, to be filled in by the police and a doctor. The police complete the first section of the form, which requires them to ask a doctor to examine the victim for evidence of a crime, and then escort the victim to the doctor to be examined. The second section of the form is used by the doctor to record any injuries. This may require a number of trips to the doctor if the victim cannot be examined straight away.

However, there can be insurmountable difficulties just to procure a form. It should cost nothing. Yet, Western Kenya Human Rights Watch, a Kenyan human rights organization, told Amnesty International, ''[T]o get a P3 form you have to bribe the police. This [form] is meant to be free, but they usually sell them for 100 shillings.'' The organization therefore usually accompanied the person they were assisting to the police station to ensure they received the form and did not have to pay for it. Also, the P3 forms are only to be obtained in police stations as they are used by the police as part of their criminal investigation. This has actively discouraged many victims of torture and ill-treatment from requesting a form and few have come forward to have their injuries recorded for the purposes of a prosecution. In cases in which abuses have been committed by the police themselves, women have feared trying to obtain a form, especially if the abuse took place at the station where they had to apply. In other cases, victims of police torture have been threatened by police officers when they tried to make a statement.

For victims this process can be harrowing and traumatic. One rape victim described her ordeal of reporting the rape to the police and having a medical examination by a doctor: ''After I had been taken to a private doctor, he told me not to wash as I would have to report to the police doctor. Since it was 2am. this meant that my report would have to be filed on the next day. I could not believe that I would have to sleep with the smell of those men on me... When I went to report to the police doctor, I found a long line with all sorts of people. The nurse assisting him gave me two glass slides and told me to stick my fingers up myself and wipe the semen onto the glass slide. I could not believe what she was saying to me, they were asking me to re-enact the rape.''

The UN Commission on Human Rights, in its resolution on the elimination of violence against women, calls for the state to provide ''access to just and effective remedies and specialized, including medical, assistance to victims.''(38) Yet, the cost of a medical consultation with a doctor, plus the lack of adequate health care facilities, denies many women victims in Kenya recourse to appropriate medical care. The inaccessibility to medical services also makes it extremely hard to ensure that vital evidence is preserved. Hospitals may be far from the victim's home, and many do not have adequate facilities or skilled staff to ensure proper treatment and medical examination of women victims. The IMLU told Amnesty International that storing medical evidence is difficult as many hospitals and medical centres do not have adequate refrigeration facilities.

As women in Kenya constitute the majority of the poor, many cannot pay to bring a case to court; the cost of hiring an advocate is prohibitively high for them. If women do seek help from a local organization or report the incident to the police, one Kenyan women's organization told Amnesty International, they ''will receive threats from [their husband's] family in order to drop the case. However, many women would rather protect the family so will suffer long term abuse and will only come...when they fear for the children.'' Many women told Amnesty International that their husband had given money to the police to have the case dropped. A human rights activist in Kitale told the organization's delegates, ''The main problem is the machinery which is meant to act on these cases. The village elder in the provincial administration is the first one the woman goes to, but he sends her back after a bribe. It is the same with the chief, police, etc. The man is not arrested even though the woman has done all the necessary.''

There are very few avenues which offer redress for women victims. The government is ill-equipped to provide services to these women when they are most urgently needed. For women who have been victims of sexual violence, there is no governmental housing to ensure their safety. Once a complaint is filed, there are few opportunities open to women who do not want to return to an abusive household or places that provide protection to women and children who have suffered domestic violence.

A small number of women's organizations have established centres which provide counselling or therapy, but they have resources only to offer temporary protection. A few shelters are now being established. For example, the Nairobi's Women Hospital offers psychological services for victims of rape and domestic violence, and the shelter established by the Women's Rights Awareness Programme (WRAP) now accommodates approximately 60 women and children. This shelter provides counselling, medical and psychiatric services, legal aid and assistance, though women can only stay there on a short-term basis.

However, the biggest problem observed by organizations that run shelters and women's organizations is that, because of women's economic disempowerment, many victims of abuse still return to their husbands. As WRAP told Amnesty International, ''The silence has been broken to a degree. The women come here for refuge but still negotiate to return home.''

Source: Amnesty International http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAFR320012002?OpenDocument&of=THEMES%5CWOMEN