Monday, April 13, 2015 | 7:01 p.m.
NAIROBI, Kenya — A court in the western Kenya town of Busia has sentenced three men to 15 years in jail for gang raping a 16-year-old girl and dumping her into a pit latrine, a civil rights group said Monday.
The three are alleged to be part of a group of six men who gang-raped the girl and had been given the punishment of cutting grass by police before an international outcry led to the harsher punishment by the courts.
Three of the girl's attackers are still at large a year since the arrest warrants were issued, Kimberly Brown, a legal consultant for Equality Now.
Brown says the girl's case and countless others have revealed significant failures by local authorities to adequately address sexual violence.
"If a victim manages to overcome the huge initial hurdle and manages to report what happened, apathy or a lack of knowledge of laws, policies and procedures by officials, and the continued lack of resources, mean that cases are often handled poorly from the outset," Brown said.
An estimated 19 out of 20 rapes in Kenya are not reported and are therefore unpunished, Brown said in a statement.
The girl was raped by in 2013 while walking home alone from her grandfather's funeral in Busia.
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