The decision by the government to bypass fathers’ DNA in identifying 43 people killed in last month’s Naivasha tanker explosion raised concerns on paternity fraud in Kenya.
Pathologists involved in the identification process, coordinated by the National Disaster Operation Centre, said the decision to overlook fathers’ samples would help them identify the victims easier and faster.
But there was the underlying sense that there are many men raising children they have not sired without their knowledge, and that the government was careful not to divulge the secret.
MOTHERS’ DNA ‘ACCURATE’
NDOC director Nathaniel Kigotho announced that pathologists would only be taking DNA samples from mothers and siblings, and not fathers, to identify the deceased persons.
This was despite the fact that most of those who turned up at the Chiromo Mortuary were either fathers or uncles of the slain victims.
Kigotho urged families to bring personal items of the deceased persons, including toothbrushes and shaving devices, where mothers and siblings were not available.
Chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor said this is because mothers’ DNA is likely to give more accurate results because of specific features only shared between the mother and child.
He said only the mother’s DNA is likely to give perfect results, except for situations where the child was changed at the hospital.
“There are special features passed from mother to child that are critical in pathology because they guarantee accuracy,” Oduor said. Therefore, pathologists prefer using mothers’ DNA, as opposed to that of male parents.
But there are also fears that DNA testing could reveal that some men may have been defrauded to believe they are biological fathers of their children when in reality, they have not even a slight biological relationship with some of, or all, of their children.
The pathologist said the practice is not isolated to Kenya; it exists everywhere in the world, which has deepened the dubious paternity.
It happens when a woman makes a conscious decision to get a child or children with a man or men other than her husband or spouse and falsely identifies the wrong man as the biological father of the child.
The pathologists’ decision heightened fears that a significant number of fathers could be among men unaware they are painstakingly but proudly raising non-biological children.
The decision has the unintended potential of ensuring that women who have conceived for men other than their spouses and kept it secret will not be exposed.
Read: Why Chiromo is not accepting fathers DNA
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DCI's Homicide Division officers prepare to investigate the Naivasha tanker explosion at the University of Nairobi's Chiromo Mortuary
APPEAL FOR STABILITY
Men are divided over whether paternity tests should be adopted. It is feared that if the paternity of all children was to be determined, the outcome is likely to instantly turn many great friends to bitter and fierce enemies.
As such, some men root for things to remain the way they are for the sake of stability of families.
“Does it matter whether your ‘known father’ is your biological father or ‘your child’ is your biological child after 20, 40 or 50 years of having grown and lived together as a family?” asked Moses Njagi [not real name].
“As a man, you should be prepared for the outcome before you choose the DNA test for your child. Because that 14-year-old handsome son you have sacrificed for and laboured to raise could be your best friend’s or neighbour’s.”
But others choose the test to determine if they are the biological fathers of their children to clear the doubts, despite the doubts being an indication that they suspect their spouses could be cheating or have cheated on them.
The paternity test outcomes have shattered many families. Pathologists firm Lancet Kenya CEO Ahmed Kalebi said there are more men seeking DNA testing of their children.
Kalebi said 30 per cent of men who sought DNA tests of their children at the Lancet Kenya Laboratories in the last two weeks discovered they had no biological relationship with them.
“Ours is to give the results and we don’t know what happens later, but women dispute the results and seek similar tests elsewhere. Some couples even fight in our offices after receiving the results,” Kalebi said.
Lancet operates mainly in the private healthcare sector. It offers specialist pathology services to doctors and their patients directly or through clinics and hospitals, corporates and insurances and industrial sectors.
It also offers the same services to individuals when courts issue orders requiring the tests, mainly in suits where women seek child support from estranged husbands after separation, and the men claim they are not responsible.
WHY WOMEN STRAY
University of Nairobi lecturer and sociologist Kenneth Ongaro gave four reasons women choose to have children with men they are not married to.
Financial stability, physical looks, social status and academic prowess are the major factors that determine whether a woman will bear children with the man she is married to or will bypass him for another man.
Women who swap men before conception have low or no regard for the men they are married to and are determined to bring forth and raise desirable offsprings.
Deceiving women prefer falling pregnant for men with good looks while remaining married to those old and ugly but financially stable ones, who assure provision of basic necessities and luxuries.
For instance, Ongaro said if an ugly man has considerable wealth that guarantees a woman financial security, that woman would marry him but get children with a man she considers to have better physical looks or intellect.
And some women married to low-profile men or under achievers will choose to have children with men who have a reputable social standing.
Others like getting children with men who have proven to be academically endowed or shown significant success in having brighter children with chances of excelling in life, which means they see their own husbands as absolute failures in life.
Ongaro said this is because women believe children can only be as good as their fathers, and if the man they are married to has unimpressive academic achievements, the children are more or less likely to be at par with him.
“The level of education is a key determining factor. If a woman is married to a man who has only gone up to standard eight or form four, she will have a particular phobia that their children can’t go far academically. Therefore, she will get children with a man who has attained university education to avoid giving birth to dunderheads and academic dwarfs,” Ongaro said.
Sadly, the pool from which women choose the men to get children with may include their spouses’ best friends. There are also times when women accidentally fall pregnant while cheating on their spouses for the mere pleasure of it, without intending to have children with the other men.
In this case, it is likely to happen when a woman cheats on her husband with a close friend who has been a “friend in deed”, her colleague, a pastor, or her lecturer, who are offering the woman some financial, emotional and other kinds of support.
The problem underlines the rampant infidelity and promiscuity in the society. It has led to increase in domestic violence and family break-ups, with devastating consequences on the both couples and children in the affected families.
VICTIMS OF PATERNITY FRAUD
There are three main victims of paternity fraud. The main victim is the man falsely identified by the mother as the father of the “fraud child”, either the woman’s husband or spouse. The other victims are the child and the biological father.
After realising they have been deceived to believe they are biological fathers of “their children”, men direct their anger at the “foreign child”, who happens to be a constant reminder of their mothers’ fraudulence and betrayal.
The men sometimes disown, mistreat, isolate or even assault the children, making them bear the blame for their mothers’ infidelity. This is because men see the child as the result of the betrayal and cheating their wife or partner has done to them.
Ongaro urged parents and religious leaders to correct the problem through inculcating good habits and positive moral values to children and congregations.
“It is a problem of unhealthy upbringing or absence of proper parenting, where parents are not available to nurture and impart good morals to their children. It begins at the point where a child is bought something to be influenced,” he said.
“Parents are the basic contacts their children have and the first interactions. They should be the primary sources of moral values their children pick up while growing up, and the church should be coming in to teach the same from a religious perspective.”
The children grow in an environment of being influenced by material gains without respect for dignity, which leads them to easily opt for immoral acts to achieve goals unconventionally.
“Parents must begin teaching their children that those shortcuts have consequences, particularly HIV and Aids,” Ongaro said.
SIDE BAR:
The increase in paternity fraud has led to an increase in demand for DNA test services in Kenya.
Lancet Kenya CEO Ahmed Kalebi said most of their clients are suspicious men seeking to confirm or clear fears that they have been defrauded in fatherhood of their children.
“Most of the men are seeking paternity test services out of curiosity and desire to confirm ‘the truth’; either because they suspect they have been cheated on or close friends and relatives have hinted it at them,” Kalebi said.
Men also choose the DNA test to challenge claims by women that they are the fathers of their children, or as a requirement before travelling overseas with their children.
Kalebi said the scientific tests revealed that many men have been duped to believe they are the fathers of the children they are raising.
Others seeking paternity tests include men who have been wrongly named as fathers of the children, by women in either paternity suits or inheritance and succession proceedings in courts.
Most men have been cleared by the results of DNA testing ordered by courts to ascertain allegations of fatherhood levelled against them by women in court.
The negative results mean that the men have no parental obligation over the child or children and have no financial responsibility, for they are not their fathers in any sense.
But some read the negative results as outright dismissal from the lives of the children immediately they are absolved of fatherhood responsibility.
The DNA testing is a mandatory requirement to prove the biological parents of the children to prevent child trafficking, before one leaves for a foreign country.
HOW TESTS WORK
DNA is a chemical found in genes that gives human beings their features, including size of teeth, height, skin colour or complexion and type of hair, among others. It is found in every single cell of human beings.
The DNA testing involves taking and comparing the sequence of human tissues of close relatives to determine whether those sampled have tissues with common sequence.
The test is based on the fact that a child inherits 50 per cent of its DNA from each parent. It has been used to expose “hit-and-run fathers” who have run away from the responsibility of providing for their children after making women pregnant.
It also exposes men who have fallen victim to “robbery with intimacy” in child support suits by sly women who are leaving no chances to reap where they have not sown.
Among other things, it has helped many men bust spouses who have cheated on them and gotten babies with other men for various reasons.
And reasons for the infidelity vary from one generation to another, to social settings of the deceitful women.
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Sammy Ochanda (in red cap), uncle of GSU officer Alfred Bisonga who perished at the Naivasha tragedy, is consoled at the Chiromo Mortuary after the arrival of 33 bodies of victims of the tragedy.
URBAN VS RURAL MOTIVATIONS
In urban areas, greedy women use child fraud for economic gains by getting children or claiming to have gotten children with mainly married, wealthy businessmen and politicians to use the children later to extort money from them. This is executed by both married and single women who want to gain undue favours from their targets.
But in traditional African society settings, there were circumstances where women would discreetly get some or all of their children “from outside” marriage.
Although it was not public that a woman should do exactly that, some conditions were considered legitimate reasons for a woman to stray and get a child or several of them with other men.
For instance, if a woman discovered that she was married into a family with a generational curse, she would get some children with another man outside her husband’s generation to have children outside the cursed lineage.
That meant if the children she got with her husband died or faced adverse effects of the curse, those sired by the other man or men would survive or escape the vagaries of the curses and continue the lineage.
If a woman’s first two or three children had disabilities or deformities, she would try getting pregnant with another man to get a normal child. And if she confirmed that the origin of the children’s deformities was with the father, she would stop having children with him.
The same applied where a woman had given birth to girls only and the man wanted a boy or vice versa.
“She would seek advice from elderly women from her paternal side and get a man or men with whom she could get a boy or boys with to save herself from ridicule and rejection by the husband and his family,” Hannah Ndung’u said.
OTHER REASONS FOR STRAYING
Other conditions that compelled women to overlook their husbands when it came to having children is lack of responsibility by their husbands.
When a man could not meet the basic marital responsibilities and domestic obligations-either by laxity, absence or non-commitment and lack of individual responsibility, a woman could find a man who could complement her husband’s failures.
Clansmen, extended family or neighbours and family friends would inform a woman of social ills and problems, including disorientation, as a result of a curse, witchcraft or genetic problem. She was expected to do “the necessary” to salvage the family’s future.
But in rare instances, men who knew they had fertility problems would allow their wives to get children with some selected men and in those cases, it is the women’s husbands who chose the candidates for their wives.
Fortunately, the DNA testing that has become the thorn in the flesh of cheating women did not exist then and most of the circumstances that occasion it today were not there.
