By Jean-Pierre A
Across Kenya, online sexual exploitation and abuse (OSEA) is escalating rapidly, with predators exploiting digital technologies to recruit, groom, abuse, and traumatise women and girls, reveal, two new reports unveiled on Thursday 30 October.
The reports uncover how the digital realm is being weaponised to perpetrate harm online and offline through technology-facilitated sex trafficking, online sexual coercion and extortion, and image-based sexual abuse, including deepfakes and non-consensual sharing of intimate images.
The report titled “Experiencing Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Kenya: Survivor Narratives and Legal Responses “ documents the experiences of twenty survivors, revealing the devastating personal toll and systemic barriers to justice and support.
Commissioned by Equality Now and produced in partnership with KICTANet, with survivor testimonies gathered by HAART Kenya, Life Bloom Services International, and Trace Kenya, the report reveals OSEA’s personal, legal, and social dimensions. It highlights the continuum of sexual exploitation across digital and physical spaces and recommends actionable, survivor-centred legal and policy reforms.
An accompanying policy brief by Equality Now, titled “ Not Just Online: Addressing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Across Digital and Physical” Realities, examines how online and offline sexual exploitation and abuse intersect and reinforce each other.
Drawing on evidence from legal and advocacy work in Kenya with survivors, civil society, justice sector actors, and the media, the brief identifies critical gaps in laws, policies, and institutional responses that leave survivors without adequate protection or legal redress. Recommendations outline ways to strengthen prevention, protection, and accountability across physical and digital spaces.
Technology weaponised to abuse women
Social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and TikTok, dating sites, encrypted messaging services, and mobile money applications like M-Pesa are increasingly used to lure women and girls into harmful situations. The lack of binding obligations on tech companies to monitor and report harmful content compounds the problem, with social media platforms failing to adequately enforce their OSEA policies.
According to the recent research, perpetrators can connect with, manipulate, blackmail, harass, and shame victims with unprecedented reach, speed, and anonymity, often operating with impunity inside and beyond Kenya’s borders. Survivors are subjected to a range of violations, including being coerced into creating sexual content, blackmailed with intimate images, livestreamed during abuse, and trafficked.
Eighteen of the twenty documented survivor stories demonstrate how predators frequently offer money and false promises of well-paid employment. Over half the survivors were targeted through work, with four recruited for jobs abroad and subjected to sexual violence once overseas.
One survivor recounted responding to an advertisement about a job in Malaysia through a Kenyan broker who communicated via WhatsApp. On arrival, she was raped by her supervisor, who told her that having sex with him was the only way he’d arrange her work visa.
She explained, “He then linked me through WhatsApp to a man he said would give me a job. This man took me to a hotel and forced me to have oral sex with him. The agent threatened to kill me if I ever uttered a word about the sexual abuse.
“I only reported when I returned to Kenya at the Department for Criminal Investigations headquarters. I was asked for proof of the rape or if I could provide DNA evidence, which I did not have.”
OSEA survivors face difficulties
Victim-blaming and fear of retaliation remain widespread, discouraging reporting to authorities. Survivors commonly face family or community pressure to withdraw complaints and reconcile informally with perpetrators. Those who report incidents often encounter dismissive law enforcement officials and weak enforcement of laws. Fragmented institutional responses hinder the progression of cases, with survivors bounced between police, hospitals, and courts without coordinated support.
Ivy* ( not her real name) was in school when she began chatting to a man on Facebook. He gained her trust by sending her money for school fees and food, but when they eventually met face-to-face, he drugged and raped her with another man.
She recounts, “They held me down, and despite my screaming and pleading, they continued. It wasn’t just the physical pain; I was terrified, humiliated, and completely powerless.
“After everything, I went to the police, hoping for justice, but they told me I had to pay KSh 8,000 (USD $62) if I wanted them to track down the two men. I’d already lost so much that day, and now it felt like I was being punished again. The system that was supposed to help me felt like another betrayal.”
According to the report authors, perpetrators exploit encryption and other digital tools to hide identities and evidence, while survivors are mainly unaware of how to preserve digital proof. Judicial and law enforcement systems lack resources, technical capacity, and expertise to collect, preserve, and analyse digital evidence, with some police, prosecutors, and judges needing training on handling OSEA cases and providing trauma-informed support.
“Kenya’s adversarial court system risks re-traumatising survivors through aggressive questioning, forcing them to face their abusers, and compelling them to recount their experiences repeatedly, with evidentiary procedure prioritised over survivor wellbeing,” said the organisations that commissioned the reports in a press release
“Prosecutors represent the State, not survivors, leaving many without personal legal guidance. Survivors report feeling invisible, disempowered, and disengaged from legal proceedings. Compensation to victims is recognised in law, but is rarely included in prosecutors’ pleadings, and therefore seldom granted,” noted the organisations in a press release.
According to the study: “Corruption also deepens mistrust in Kenya’s justice process, with survivors seeing investigations compromised by perpetrators using bribery and social connections to evade punishment.”
Kenya’s legal system challenges
Kenya has taken progressive steps to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse across physical and digital spaces through various laws and policies, including the Sexual Offences Act (2006), Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act (2010), the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (2018) read together with the recently enacted Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act (2024). The country has also ratified international and regional instruments, including the Maputo Protocol and Palermo Protocol, which oblige states to protect women and girls from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse.
However, the reports note, Kenya’s legal system remains rooted in outdated definitions of abuse, often treating online and offline harms as separate, and enforcement remains weak and fragmented.
“National laws haven’t kept pace with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and algorithmic targeting, nor do they adequately recognise or define key online harms, including livestreamed sexual abuse and image-based sexual exploitation,” note the reports authors in a press release
Comprehensive legal reform is still urgently needed to strengthen and harmonise Kenya’s laws, improve digital forensic capacity, and ensure survivor-centred justice. Current reviews of the Sexual Offences Act and the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act offer crucial opportunities.
Experts are calling on Kenya to adopt trauma-informed, gender-responsive approaches and to strengthen coordination across justice, health, and psychosocial systems.
“There is a need for better collaboration among stakeholders, increased institutional capacity to prevent and respond to abuse, and stronger accountability mechanisms, supported by adequate resources.”
