The lawyer acting for the women claims that reports of the rapes reached British officers and officials in Kenya, as well as the local police.
But no soldier has ever been prosecuted or disciplined over the allegations, which date back some thirty years.
Some of the alleged rape victims have held a protest in Nairobi, where the British Armed Forces Minister has met the Kenyan government to discuss the allegations. The Royal Military Police has begun an inquiry.
The attacks are said to have taken place over a wide area north of Nairobi, around the rural communites of Archer's Post, Wamba and Dol Dol.
As Stephen Smith reports from northern Kenya, the allegations have divided families - and Kenyan society.
Gerard speaks two languages and is a budding engineer. He's also a useful footballer. But he's been ridiculed by his schoolmates because he's different.
Thirteen years ago, Gerard's mother was walking home from school with her friends, she says, when she was raped by two Gurka soldiers serving in the British army.
Sabina said: "I have found it very difficult to tell my son why he's different. I haven't told him I was raped until now. I told him it was an accident and that God made him that way. He's too young to understand and it brings me a lot of shame.”
Gerard's nickname is 'Mzungu' - white boy. We spoke to him with his mother's permission.
In this vast plain of Northern Kenya, an hour's flight from Nairobi, claims that tribes-women have been raped by British soldiers over the past thirty years are now at the centre of a huge controversy which has divided the community and embroiled the Kenyan and British governments.
Here, in the small settlement of Archer's Post, elders of nomadic tribes have gathered to discuss the allegations.
The British Army has held exercises here for decades. It's claimed that officers and others have known about the rapes for years, and done nothing.
Sophie Omar claims that she was gang-raped by British troops five years ago while bringing cattle to water at this river.
Sophie gave birth to Rachma after the alleged rape. Her husband divorced her and took their son away. Sophie and Rachma now live in a village of women, many of them rape victims who are shunned by the wider community.
Into this landscape arrives the perhaps incongruous figure of a leading London solicitor not to mention box after box of legal documents.
Martyn Day is suing the British government over the alleged rapes.
People flock from the distant bush to hear the visiting partner of Leigh Day and Co. He's so popular that babies have even been named after him.
The reason is that he's already won the tribes people more than four million pounds in compensation - a fortune here - over weapons abandoned by the British Army.
Three years ago, Channel 4 News revealed that scores of nomads had been killed or injured by munitions left behind on the firing ranges of Kenya where British troops hold war games. Martyn Day took up the case.
Now he's pursuing the Ministry of Defence over claims that soldiers posted here assaulted women, often in gang rapes.
But away from the firing ranges, in the towns of Kenya, there's great scepticism about how many women were involved.
But mindful of such criticisms, Day is insisting that rape claims are checked out as rigorously as possible before they're included in litigation. And he's not the only one on the trail of rape claims.
When we were in Archer's Post, we got a tip-off that officers from the Royal Military Police were at the local police station.
They're also investigating the rape allegations. We found the officers in a thatched hut at the back of the police station, where they were looking through old police incident books.
In the isolated community of Il Polay, claims of assault against British soldiers twenty years ago led the local chief to alert the district officer, a key official in the Kenyan system. He never had a reply and he says his letter made no difference at all.
Channel 4 News has seen documents which indicate that the chief's complaints were passed on to the British army by Kenyan officials.
Five months later, in October 1983, reports of rape were discussed at a meeting attended by British army officers and Kenyan chiefs and officials.
According to the minutes, one officer said he was 'sympathetic on the women who were raped and pledged to take serious steps. He said that the soldiers will be restricted to their working camps and investigations carried (out).'
As early as August 1977, a letter was sent to the British army complaining of widespread rape and requesting that they 'take serious measures against these undisciplined soldiers'.
Two separate reports from 1981 document the rape of 8 women and 5 children. Other records show that as recently as 1999 a dozen rapes were reported to police.
The Ministry of Defence says it's very concerned by the allegations. It says it has never investigated them before. One task is to check that the documents are genuine.
No soldier has ever been disciplined over the allegations.
The documents beg the question: why have the Kenyan authorities done nothing about the rape claims?
Is it possible, as many Kenyans told us privately , that the rape claims have been greatly exaggerated? We flew to the town of Nanyuki, where British soldiers are garrisoned while they're in East Africa.
To the disgust of local traders, the streets and souvenir stalls are quiet. Normally there would be hundreds of troops in town but they're effectively confined to barracks while the allegations are investigated.
We were shown over the Riverside Club. In normal times, it's well patronised by squaddies and women.
We were told that Kenya was seen as a 'sex and booze fest' easily paid for by the troops. So many Kenyans find it hard to believe that they would have resorted to rape in such numbers.
But not only is Martin Day determined to see the compensation case through, he now has a further demand of the British government.
In remote Archer's Post, the women who say they were raped by British soldiers, and are outcasts from their community, make a living selling trinkets to tourists.
They are hoping for compensation to make them wealthy beyond their imaginings. They have little knowledge of the stir - in Nairobi and in Whitehall - which has finally been provoked by the dark secret of what happened to them here.
|
