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Rebecca Cheptegei is the third elite female athlete killed in Kenya in three years, part of a troubling trend of femicide in the region.
Last month, Rebecca Cheptegei was competing in the Paris Olympics in the women’s marathon. On Thursday, she lost her life in an act of domestic violence.
Cheptegei, a long-distance Ugandan runner, died in a hospital in Kenya after the man she was seeing, Dickson Ndiema, doused her in gasoline and set her on fire.
“It’s devastating on so many levels,” said Hayat Bearat, a visiting associate professor of law and the interim director of the Domestic Violence Institute at Northeastern University. “It really goes to show how (domestic violence) affects every single person. Even an Olympic athlete can lose their life as a result of domestic violence.”
Cheptegei is the third elite female runner suspected of being killed by a partner in the last three years, according to news reports. Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich, was charged with her murder after she was found dead in her home in 2021. Later that year, Damaris Mutua, another runner, was found strangled to death; according to police, her boyfriend — who has not been found — is the main suspect.
Bearat said it’s not unusual for physical abuse to begin or escalate once one partner becomes famous and the other becomes jealous.
“You see someone become successful and create a career for themselves, and the abuser feels like they can’t control them anymore,” Bearat said. “So they get physically violent. … There’s a wheel of power and control of domestic violence and there’s various types of ways abusers might try to exert their power over a survivor. … They may do so by escalating the violence.”
On a larger scale, Cheptegei’s death is part of a trend of killings of women and girls, also known as femicide, in African nations. In 2022, Africa surpassed Asia for the region with the most gender-related killings with at least 20,000 victims, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Bearat said these acts often fall under the umbrella of domestic violence as it’s common for the perpetrator to have a relationship with the victim.
Experts have said some of this is because of cultural norms in African countries. In many areas, women and girls are viewed as disposable, and leaders downplay the problem. Cheptegei’s father said he himself contacted police about Ndiema intimidating his daughter after the two got into a fight over property but claimed the authorities “took the matter for granted.”
Bearat said that gender-based violence is the biggest violation of human rights against women globally, but it’s particularly prevalent in places where there are no laws in place criminalizing those specific acts. For example, some African and Asian countries still allow “honor killings” and marital rape. Bearat said these laws might protect family members when they harm female relatives, and even if these laws are eventually lifted, the mentality remains.
“There’s these societal justifications for these actions,” Bearat said. “In order for it to end, there needs to be … the legal framework that exists and there needs to be societal norms. If the laws say you can’t do this, but the societal norms state that you still do XYZ, then the laws only go so far.”
Bearat added that it’s also common for authorities to not act on reports until an act of physical violence is committed. By then, it can often be too late.
“It’s a big problem across the world,” she said. “I can speak from experience working here in the United States, where survivors will contact the police and nothing is done or the police might say ‘Wait until they actually do something.’ A number of times, I’ve had clients say ‘So, they basically want to wait for me to die for them to act.’ This really resonates with a case like this.”