Photo: Kenya Mom Whose 22-Year Old Daughter Eloped With Her Husband Tells Her Story

Her story is so complicated. The mom is only 36. She had her
first child at 14, and at 36 she already has six more. Worst part, her new
husband started sleeping with her first daughter (his step child) at 8. Now
they have eloped together to live as husband and wife, leaving the woman behind
with the six children. The story;

A woman in Kibera is searching for her 22-year-old daughter
who ran away with her husband in a bizarre case of husband snatching. Caroline
Achieng, 36, has been in agony for the past one year during which her efforts
to trace her missing daughter whom she conceived as a teenager have been
fruitless.

The daughter went missing after a family altercation that
ensued from a revelation that she had an affair with her stepfather, got
pregnant and procured an abortion, all paid for by her mother after a
well-choreographed trickery by the duo.

Achieng’s daughter was last seen at the Kibera District
Commissioner’s office when the family had been summoned over rape allegations
that she had filed against her stepfather.

“We have had our low moments as a family and at some point
it got so bad that I fought with my husband and he moved out of our house
carrying his and my daughter’s clothes,” Ms Achieng told Nairobi News.

The family drama started in September 2013 when Ms Achieng’s
daughter was unwell and frequently complained of stomach pain.

“I told her to go for a checkup and when she came back from
the clinic she told me she had been given ulcers medication,” said Ms Achieng.

The girl’s illness kept recurring and at one time the
stepfather proposed that he takes her to a better hospital for checkup and to
which Achieng obliged.

“He told me that he had identified a doctor at Kijabe
Hospital where the girl would be treated and since I was the sole family
breadwinner, running a charcoal business, I financed them and they went to the
hospital,” she said.

Achieng also financed the follow-up trips to Kijabe Hospital
for the treatment of her daughter as her illness kept getting worse until she
closed down her charcoal vending business because of the huge hospital bills.

“It was months later after she (daughter) had filed the rape
case that she narrated to the officers at Kilimani police station what had
happened. That’s when I learnt that all this time when she was ‘ailing’ she was
trying to procure an abortion,” said the mother.

Achieng felt cheated as the girl revealed that her
step-father had impregnated her and sourced for a clinic where she was given
abortion pills that made her stomach pains worse at first but later flushed out
the eight-weeks-old foetus.

“She told the officers that she was sexually assaulted
repeatedly by my husband since when she was 8-years-old and was impregnated
later but she never wanted me to know since her father threatened her,”
narrated the mother.

The mother of seven resolved to divorce her husband but
before he moved out of the house, her daughter went missing.

Ms Achieng says she searched for her at her relatives’
houses in vain and it is only after her husband of 15 years moved out that she
heard that the two had reconnected and were living in an estate unknown to her.

She has been living in agony over her failed marriage as
well as being unable to trace her first born daughter who lives with a man who
broke her heart and left her with six other children to fend for.

Achieng has managed to secure a casual job with the National
Youth Service but she owes her landlord six months’ rent arrears due to her
meager earnings that she splits to cater for children school fees and food.