The Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) wants the government to review a section of the constitution that violates the rights of mentally challenged people.
Section 146 of the penal code refers to mentally challenged victims of sexual violence as "imbeciles" and "idiots".
The clause reads: “Any person who, knowing a person to be an idiot or imbecile, has or attempts to have unlawful carnal connection with him or her under circumstances not amounting to rape, but which prove that the offender knew at the time of the commission of the offence that the person was an idiot or imbecile, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment with hard labour for 14 years."
They also want the government to harmonise the penal code with the sexual offences act.
“There is a loophole in the law that sometimes people in the Judiciary take advantage of to frustrate cases involving sexual violence,” stated Wairimu Wahome, the Executive Director at COVAW
She added that it denied the mentally challenged in our society the access to justice.
If a perpetrator of rape is charged with breaking Section 146 of the Penal Code, it is usually treated as defilement and attracts a lighter sentence.
However, if the same perpetrator is charged with breaking the Sexual Offences Act, they get a harsher sentence as the charge is be treated as rape.
Mentally challenged people are already marginalised and the law makes it even harder for them to get justice.
Similar reforms are also needed in the police force and at hospitals to give sensitivity in the handling of cases of sexual violence, especially where the mentally-challenged are involved.
