Rogue and notorious beach boys rape helpless girls and women for swimming floaters in Mombasa public beaches, a highly documented sad story but no response from the government.
Kenyans join the rest of the world in Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year celebrations as coastal towns of Kenya host more visitors than any
other place in the festive seasons.
Mombasa, Diani in Kwale, and Malindi in Kilifi County have
beautiful public beaches with amazing sand dunes and regular coastlines
extended by the flatty seabed making them very interesting and less risky even
to those who were not trained to swim. However, danger lurks in these beaches
for female visitors as bad boys from nearby areas terrorize girls and ladies
in the name of help swimming. Notorious boys seduce girls and ladies or
harass them sexually. They don’t care about age because even the teen girls
and women of older ages are not spared in this heinous act.
Rogue beach boys mostly from Mishomoroni, Kisauni, Kongowea,
Bombolulu, Bamburi, and Mtwapa use public holidays and weekends to prey on their
victims on public beaches. During these times, more people from different parts
of Kenya visit the Coast and flock beaches in multitudes, the vast majority of them
are from highlands who don’t know how to swim hence becoming successful targets
of bad beach boys.
Tricks used by bad beach boys to lure the swimming girls before defiling them
For a girl to get into this defilement trap, the boys tend
to be generously helping ladies to swim with buoyant floating materials usually
tyre tubes. These tubes are for hire
from beach vendors who are authorized to do business by Kenya Maritime
Authority (KeMA) and county governments. The horny boys approach ladies with
smiling and innocence face with floating tube already placed in front of the
targeted lady. In some instances, the tube is put on the lady’s body without
her request or consent. Then if she responds swiftly, after few minutes the
boys start to touch their private parts as they drift them deeper and far away
from the swimming crowds or onshore.
The rest is getting inside their inner wears after successful
seduction, if the lady resists in any stage of these processes, she gets sexual
assaults such rape or threatened drowning leading helpless girls and women to
accept an unplanned sex activities with strangers whose their about are
unknown, leaving female visitors uncertain of having transmitted with HIV/AIDS
and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) like Gonorrhea and Syphilis.
The boys committing these evils seem not to know or care about the health dangers and
legal repercussions ahead of them.
The nature of this story has widely been documented by media
houses and personal bloggers in the country. In 2010, KTN Kenya revealed a similar
story of girls being defiled by bad beach boys in Pirate Beach, the famous
Bamburi or its gazetted name Jomo Kenyatta International Beach. The story was
captioned Waves of Indecency.
There is a man in Dian who confessed how he used to seduce
ladies in the ocean water but with some techniques without raping. He said with
the help of a floater and salty seawater, it’s very easy to spread a lady’s legs
at 180° degrees, meaning the best angle to access the female genitals. The
man told Kameme TV in 2018 in an interview in which his face was blurred for anonymity reasons.
A female student from Technical University of Mombasa (TUM)
swore she will never return to Bamburi Beach alleging she was nearly raped by
boys who pretended to help her swim with a floater.
Despite all these stories in the public, the government has
not taken the proper measures to deter these barbaric acts which saw thousands
of innocent girls lose virginity, get STDs, and be traumatized through rapping,
forced sex, and sodomy. A few years ago security was intensified in major public
beaches as police choppers, armed forces, and Kenya Maritime Authority boats
patrolling with county inspectorates. But these security checks are not part of
the plan to curb the bad beach boys from preying on girls and women for forced
sex under seawater but are aimed at protecting the public from terrorist
attacks by Alshabab.
When he was asked on this matter, by then Mombasa Police Commander Johnston Ipara said “We decided to establish the police post to curb these cases. So far, we have been successful…” Not everyone going to the beach has good intentions. Others are just there to take advantage of vulnerable women,”. Mr Ipara told the Nation.