Woman tells amazing survivor story after gang-rape on her wedding day

Kenyan pastor Terry Gobanga was featured this week by the BBC after she wrote a book about her experience and struggle to overcome a feeling of “being cursed”.

On her way back from the bus stop prior to her own wedding in Nairobi, the future church pastor was apprehended by three men who took turns in their car to gang-rape her. Her attempts to inform them that it was her wedding day elicited no sympathy whatsoever.

She was left for dead, but coughed on her way to the mortuary, alerting the driver to the fact her life might still be saved. Once she was hospitalised, officials started to phone around to see if a church in the area was missing a bride.

They found her family and husband to be, who received the devastating news that she had not only been raped but due to a stab wound in her womb would not be able to have children.

Her fiancé went on to marry her after she recovered, but she was only in for more tragedy when her husband passed away in a freak accident.

Gobanga told the BBC that her neighbours kept their children from her due to a belief that she may have been cursed. At one point, she even felt that might be true herself.

Extraordinarily, she fell in love again and remarried, and the couple was blessed with two daughters.

Today, Gobanga works tirelessly to support other rape survivors, who she refuses to label “victims”.

Read her astonishing account of her own story in her own words here. But be warned, you will probably need a big box of tissues to get to the end in one piece.