My Daughter Snatched My Husband.. Please Read

These days, what makes news is when a woman
snatches her daughter’s husband, or a daughter
sleeps with her father. Rarely does a month pass
before such depraved acts are reported by the
media.
Recently, a university employee admitted in an
interview with Parent magazine that her daughter
snatched her husband.
Mercy Igoki, a 48-year-old senior assistant
registrar told her bizarre story and claims she has
forgiven both her daughter and her husband for
the pain they caused her. She said:
“I share the circumstances under which my
marriage split up hoping it will inspire someone to
start her own journey to forgiveness and
restoration, as opposed to bitterness, anger and
death,” she says.
In 2006, while working as a teacher and
counsellor in a local high school, Mercy met an
orphan girl. She took her home and adopted the
girl who was three years older than Mercy’s first
born.
Mercy says the girl bonded very well with her
family and her problems began when she had to
resign from her job to recover from an accident
that left her with multiple fractures.
“I enrolled for an undergraduate degree in
education in Meru. I would be away from home
sometimes up to three weeks or longer at a time
because of my studies.
It was while travelling back from one of these
trips in 2008, just after my daughter had finished
high school, that I received a phone call from one
of my neighbours. She told me, ‘Just know that
girl you are living with is not your daughter but
your co-wife. I was shocked.”
Mercy says she decided to investigate and
discovered clandestine correspondence between
them.
“In anger, I confronted them and to my shock, my
husband blamed me for the affair, saying I had
brought the girl to him,” says Mercy. She has
since forgiven them.
Not surprisingly, cases of older women snatching
husbands from their daughters, or daughters
snatching men from their mothers are hardly
reported due to embarrassment and stigma.
Experts say such deviant behaviour is among
many modern ills placing the traditional family
unit at risk.
Mid last year, when an Embakasi woman, Hannah
Mwenje, caught her husband and mother in her
matrimonial bed one morning, her tears sent the
nation reeling in shock, particularly because she
was forced to endure the indignity of watching
them.
“It was a Sunday. I went to church with my two
children. My husband was still sleeping when I
left.
During the church service, my baby became
restless so I decided to leave before the service
was over because he was making so much noise
and disrupting the service.
I got home and found the door open. I could hear
voices from the bedroom,” she says, pausing to
describe their two-room house in Pipeline,
Embakasi.
My husband heard me walk in and came out of
the bedroom naked. He dragged me into the
bedroom and I found my mother naked in bed. I
was dazed,” Mwenje recalls. She says the two
went ahead and finished their ‘business’ as she
stood shell-shocked watching them.
When they finished, my mother told me that a
man like my husband didn’t deserve a woman like
me. She then dressed and gave my one-year-old
son five shillings to go buy sweets. They left with
my husband as I collapsed on the floor,” says
Mwenje.
Mwenje wanted to kill herself but she didn’t have
the energy to stand up. She stayed on the floor
for hours before she sent her three-year-old elder
son to call a neighbour.
“The neighbour came and helped me stand up. I
had no strength. She took me to her house and
took care of my children,” says Mwenje.
Her husband, who is a plumber, and her mother
went and started living together.