Apparently, Florence,
wife of a somewhat known clergyman/public figure Elias Njeru, had accused her
husband of domestic violence and attempted murder as he had stabbed her many
times. I don’t know any of these people even though they seem to have quite a
following. I did not follow the news story in itself, rather the conversations
and video evidence presented in the court of public opinion.
Even though Florence had presented herself to be the victim and sought public sympathy by conducting interviews on the hospital bed and asking for donations, CCTV surveillance footage would later tell a different story. The people were flabbergasted to find out that it was Florence herself who was the perpetrator! She had almost killed her husband in a fit of rage by crashing into his car multiple times. When he approached her car and tried to take the keys from her, it was Florence who allegedly attacked him with the knife.
Not only did surveillance footage show Florence’s wrongdoings in HD resolution, it also showed her having somewhat of an illicit relationship with the watchman, who was her witness to the event. Of course, men and women came out in large numbers to condemn Florence and her false story that would have caused serious damage to an innocent man’s life if there were no cameras watching.
I must reiterate that other than the CCTV footage and the conversations online, I am not very familiar with the case, so all that I say is an allegation until we have clear judgement from the courts. However, the story did stir a walk down history in my mind. Since women have always been the majority of abuse victims, at a certain point, laws and policies were changed to favour victims. Of course, we as women cannot deny that there are the rotten few who have misused this advantage put in place to protect victims.
All over the world, there
are men in prison who have been falsely accused of abuse and rape by women who
knowingly altered reality to turn themselves into victims. Of course we must
remember that of every one man falsely accused, there are hundreds who are
actual perpetrators to the crime. This does not mean that we should accuse
those who are innocent.
In 2019, Ava DuVernay directed the award-winning mini-series When They See Us, based on the 1989 trial of the Central Park Five. The Central Park Five were a group of five teenage boys between the ages of 14 and 16 who had been accused of raping a lone jogger in Central Park, New York. The woman was brutally beaten and raped and almost did not survive the incident, she has since lost all memory of the traumatic event. However, it was the police in New York that coerced and pressured the young boys into giving false statements.
The boys were found guilty and served almost 15 years in jail. It wasn’t until 2002 when the real perpetrator served time with one of the accused five and confessed. DNA evidence proved that he was the sole perpetrator and the boys’ case was overturned as they sued the state for millions of dollars for wrongful imprisonment.
If you read many history books, and listen to stories of people who were wronged, you will know that there are, in fact, many women who would falsely accuse men to protect themselves from whatever judgement.
A fellow Kenyan who was a
schoolmate in South Africa also served a few years in jail in South Africa over
a rape allegation in what he says was a consentual relation between him and a
white woman. When things went south, the young woman chose to protect herself
from the embarrassment by claiming rape. Allegedly.
To this day, I do not know the truth to the
story, but I do know that when you are living in a white-dominated society, you
better stay away from the white girls who punish their absentee
fathers/husbands by sleeping around with people of colour.
