"Something has happened to me over the last month. I have lost everything I know. And one evening when I thought I had not anything more to lose, I lost even more.

We were huddled into a bus, the kind that looks like a lorry. Women and men, both young and old, and children, we all looked at each other glad that we were not among the collective of dead bodies strewn all over the dusty plains. There were many of us, packed like sardines, hanging on, as we creaked along, escaping the violence that had broken our homes, the homes that glowed red and ashy. I was terrified, and it was all real.

They finally settled us in what I imagine the rest of the world is calling refugee camps, or internally displaced people's camps. Imagine that, a few days before, we were home owners, we were selling our surplus, and we were hard-working and productive Kenyans. Now we are humiliated, we line up for food and for clothes and blankets and live among strangers. Strangers I am now bound to by our shared fate.

Later that night, our first night in the camp, I could not sleep. I tried, but I felt the fear, I heard the shouts and I saw blood every time I closed my eyes. And then I heard the screams, and they were real this time. On the ground lay two women, screaming and writhing. And the men, a collection of young men much like those who had burned our house, their faces listless, almost dazed were standing over them, their pants down. They did not seem to notice us, or to care that they were in the open. I gasped, maybe I screamed and one of them heard me.

They came for me. Soon, I was fighting for my life and my sanity. One after another they fought on my body. I was their new cause, their democracy, their lost election. And then I passed out."

Beyond the looting, burning, hacking and slashing back home, is a much less reported second victimisation of women and children of both sexes. While it is difficult to say whether this violence is connected to the ethnic clashes, is political or is merely opportunistic and a function of the general state of lawlessness, the facts show that there has been a sharp spike in the number of woman reporting to hospitals for medical help after suffering sexual violence.

The Nairobi Women's Hospital reports that it is now treating about 152 patients for sexual abuse; the youngest of whom is a one year old baby, its statistics show what is greater than a twofold increase over ante-bellum numbers. A United Nations spokeswoman says that young men are using rape to coerce and terrorize "enemies" into expulsion from their communities. These reports, and others that indicate that 85% of all Internally Displaced Persons are female show the vulnerability that women find themselves face to face with in a country that is increasingly lawless and where social norms and structures are dissolving in the power vacuum. This vacuum will be especially pronounced in remote areas where even those women who have likely suffered abuse will find that the safety of their children and the pressures of salvaging as much property as possible, are priorities over reporting rape and/ or seeking medical attention.

Even if we discount the theories that indicate that the sexual violence is ethnic in nature and intended to humiliate, oppress and vanquish opposing tribes (which theories are supported by multiple reports of ethnically targeted gang-rapes like the one in the introducting account), it is difficult not to find extremely repugnant a society in which there exist such pronounced levels of misogyny that sexual violence should become this prevalent; and if the extenuations for the looting and arson are to be extrapolated, justifiable. Indeed it is this attitude far more than the actual rape that is most worrying. In light of the previously mentioned over-extension of the security services, the climate of impunity that fuels such violence against what are often defenceless, homeless and tortured people, may soon make os sexual violence a core weapon in the arsenal of political discontent.

And this is only part of the long-term effect. Healthcare workers are worried about the increase of HIV-AIDS in a country that was already struggling to manage a large number of infected individuals, many of whom were suffering something of a blockade on supplies of medicines as a result of the roadblocks across the Rift Valley. One can only begin to imagine the trauma effected on rape survivors, their agony and injury piled on to the tragic loss of their homes and families. They are the greatest victims, who in many cases will not only have been impoverished and robbed, but also suffered the ultimate humiliation.

The events are in line with extensive studies that have proved that sexual violence is not an act of sexual frustration but rather an act of aggression, an effort at domination and oppression. In a study by Ruth Seifert of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the case is made that rape is not biological in nature. Seifert argues that rape is dependent on the social and cultural context of a society. When at war she argues t, rape is part of the rules of war, furthermore men rape the women to undermine the masculinity of their opponents. Fortunately for us, Kenya is not at war, but we are suffering already, the symptoms at war.

Never before have rape and other forms of sexual violence been so prevalent, we must all work to mitigate their effect with counselling and palliative health care, and to ensure that its victim's lives are returned to normal as soon as is possible.

Please donate to the Gender Violence Recovery Centre of the Nairobi Women's Hospital. They have now set rape crisis centers in the slums of Nairobi and all other affected regions in the country.