Joan Chelimo Melly, who took EC silver in the half marathon for Romania at the beginning of the summer, is back in the runner’s paradise Iten in Kenya where she has her training base.
– I was beaten, I was thrown out of my own house. All my money was taken. Everything was taken away from me and it happened here in Iten, says Melly to Dutch NOS.
She has joined the organization Tirop’s Angels which was formed in memory of the triple world champion Agnes Tirop who was murdered three years ago, aged only 25. Her partner is a suspect but no trial has yet been held.
It is precisely quarrels about money that make the successful Kenyan female runners extra vulnerable to violence by their partners.
“You will have to go to the morgue”
– He said to me one day: When I hit you with my hand, you will have to go to the morgue, says Lydia Rotich, who was WC fourth in the 3,000 meter hurdles.
Violence against women is part of a larger social problem in Kenya. According to a report from the WHO, 38 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced violence from their partner.
Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta has called violence against women a “national crisis”. Between 2016 and 2023, more than 500 Kenyan women were murdered – 75 percent by someone they had a close relationship with.