'What we do here is magical': meet the Irish woman rescuing Kenya's child sex abuse victims

This week on our Mums Who Inspire series, we chatted to Olive Halpin, head of The Ray of Sunshine Foundation, rescuing children used in the Kenyan sex trafficking industry. If you have a story that you would like to be featured, email mumswhoinspire[at]magicmum[dot]com.

Olive Halpin has 32 daughters, and counting.

She is the driving force behind The Ray of Sunshine Foundation, an Irish charity is responsible for building two centres for children rescued from the sex trafficking industry in Mombasa, Kenya.

 In 2016, overseeing a group of Irish volunteers, the charity built a centre for rescued girls in a mere 36 days. Since it’s opening in February 2016, 32 girls have passed through the doors, each of them call her Mama Olive.

“Even if I won the lotto, I wouldn't have that feeling in my heart because what we do here every day is magical,” Olive told Magicmum. “It is a magic moment when people come, they see what they have to do and they get it done.”

Hailing from Clarecastle in Co. Clare, Olive worked in Shannon Airport, until leaving for Romania in 2001. There she worked in orphanages, caring for children orphaned by the revolution and decides of civil unrest.

After seven years, she was approached by Father Martin Keane, a priest from her hometown who had been in involved with missions for forty years.  He charged her with putting together a group of volunteers to build a polytechnic school in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

In 2016, she took on a different task in Kenya- building the first rescue centre for girls used in the sex trafficking industry in Mombasa, Kenya.

The seaside city with a population the same as Dublin, has huge problems with drugs and sex trafficking. The centre is a safe haven for the girls, aged between 3 and 16, a place where they can get a second chance at childhood.

“Life has been very hard for these girls. Our goal is to provide a safe environment for them, a home, so that they have a normal life.”

Run in conjunction with the Sisters of St Joseph, girls who arrive in centre have been committed there by the local court system.  

“We work with the courts, every girl that comes here has a committal order. She would be working through the courts,” Olive explains.  “If a girl has been used or sold into the sex trafficking industry and it comes to the attention of the police, we then get involved.”

Once a child is taken into custody, they are held in a detention centre until their court hearing. They are released into the home.

“We get the girl at the end of it all, after all the trauma she’s been through. After being defiled, after being in the courts, after being put in a detention centre, where she would have been held waiting to give evidence against the predator.”

On top of being abused, the girls face the additional trauma of being held in a detention centre and being forced to give detailed evidence against their abuser in court.

They often arrive to the centre exhausted and terrified.

“There was one girl that came here and she was so exhausted from the trauma and everything she’d been through that she slept for four days.

“She’d wake up and we’d feed her a little bowl or a cup of porridge.  And the only question she’d ask when she woke up is ‘Am I safe?’

“To reassure her we’d show her the gates, the locks, the walls. After that her life changed, she became so much lighter.”

St Bakihta’s Home for Girls is a place to heal and a place of hope.

“Everything in here is very precious to the girls because that’s all they possess.

“They have their locker, their bed, a nice garden, the arts and crafts room. They have a lovely time here and it’s a very special place.

“When they arrive they’re in a terrible state. But as the days, weeks, and months pass, they start to heal.”

The nuns are trained in caring and counselling, and work with the girls, helping them to come to terms with their experiences.

Olive says that the partnership with the Sisters is “a blessing for us, because we can’t be here all the time.”

There are currently 21 girls in the centre and the results are starting to show for themselves. One of the original rescue girls is currently in boarding school, sponsored by The Ray of Sunshine.

 “We’re very proud of her. She has had an extremely hard background. She’s been with us for three years. She did counselling, arts, crafts and it built up her confidence. For Christmas, she’ll come home here to us, this is her home.

“She has an ambition to be a court administrator. She’s one of the lucky girls, who can go up along the ladder and who knows she could be the next President of Kenya!”

Thanks to the success of the girls centre and the unrelenting support from the volunteers, local community and Irish Ambassador, The Ray of Sunshine opened a second home for boys just this week. It was built by 150 Irish volunteers in just 36 days. 

Olive is modest about her central role in the charity, preferring instead to praise her fellow directors and volunteers.

“If I had one wish is that I could fly all the volunteers back over here for the opening day, because they made it happen, not me, not the directors but the volunteers who work so hard, collected their money and put their faith in us to oversee it.

“I am so grateful to volunteers because without them none of this would be possible. They’re leaving a great legacy.

“It’s a legacy that will be here forever.”

Kenya is her second home. “I’ve never had children or married, so it’s nice to share my love with the girls.

“I really love the girls. And I hope to God that each one of them that comes through our doors will do well, I will stop at nothing to make their dreams come true.”

With the chance of safety, stability and an education, sometimes it can seem too good to be true for the girls. 

“We were sitting in the arts and crafts and she was reading Cinderella. She had just arrived from a local orphanage so I asked her name.

"She replied ‘Can I be Cinderella?’ We all know her as Cinderella now.”

They may have suffered through the worst of horror stories, but it's certain that Olive will keep working to ensure their fairy-tale endings. 

For more information on The Ray of Sunshine Foundation see here.