The Alliance Girls case is not isolated—it exposes a culture of grooming that stretches from high school dormitories to PhD scholarships.
We have read with horror about the sexual grooming of students at Alliance Girls’ High School. For many, the news is shocking. For others—especially women who passed through similar institutions—it is tragically familiar.
What few are willing to admit is this: this is not an isolated incident. It is the inevitable outcome of a system that has, for decades, neglected to protect the very girls it claims to empower. Behind the polished school gates and gleaming academic trophies lies a darker truth—predators have not just infiltrated the education system; they have been enabled by it.
In schools like Alliance—elite, high-performing, tightly controlled—the grooming isn’t just of girls. The institution grooms the public too: to trust, to praise, to deny. Reputations are managed. Whispers are silenced. Victims are disbelieved or blamed. And so the cycle continues.
The Anatomy of Grooming: Power, Silence, Betrayal
Sexual grooming is not about sex. It’s about power—slowly applied, carefully masked. A teacher begins with kindness. Offers mentorship. Shows concern. Sends late-night messages. Touches too long. Tests the boundaries. And by the time the girl realises what’s happening, she’s isolated, ashamed, and afraid to speak.
Worse still, in many cases, she doesn’t even realise it was abuse—until years later.
This is the horror: abusers hide in plain sight. They are not strangers. They are the ones given staff housing. They lead chapel. They coach debate. And in the name of discipline, of tradition, of “moulding future leaders,” they are left unchallenged.
The System Protects Itself
Why does this happen in top schools like Alliance Girls? Because reputation is currency. And girls—no matter how brilliant, how ambitious, how hurt—are expendable when that currency is threatened.
The school will call it “an unfortunate incident.” The ministry will promise “a full investigation.” A sacrificial lamb might even be offered—a teacher quietly transferred. But the truth is that the system is designed to forget, not to protect.
There are no safe reporting structures. There is no trauma support. There is no accountability for silence. There is only a message: Don’t embarrass the school.
Let’s Tell the Truth
This is not just about Alliance Girls. This is about how deeply broken our societal response to sexual abuse is—how quickly we turn away, how instinctively we defend the institution over the individual.
It’s about how we, the public, collude in the cover-up every time we shrug and say,
“At least they passed their exams.”
“Why are they remembering now?”
“Isn’t that an isolated case?”
“So many girls went through that school and turned out fine.”
But what is the perfect time to remember a trauma you were never allowed to name?
What is the perfect age to unearth the shame that was handed to you as a teenager and has sat like a stone on your chest ever since?
We do not ask the same questions of survivors of war, or accident, or illness. Only girls who were groomed, silenced, and violated are told to remember on schedule—or not at all.
This culture of disbelief is what keeps predators safe and victims invisible. It’s what trains a generation of girls to quietly fold their pain under their uniforms and smile for prize-giving day.
Grooming Doesn’t Stop in High School
This idea of grooming—the slow corrosion of boundaries under the guise of opportunity—does not end at the dormitory gates of girls’ schools. It has crept, fully clothed in academic prestige, all the way up to PhD scholarships, fellowships, and international research programs.
At that level, it is more subtle but just as lethal.
A white professor, as old as Methuselah, shares a hotel room with a bright, young African female student—because, without his “help,” she can’t afford to attend the conference. Or a powerful male academic dangles access, authorship, or visas in front of a female student with a knowing smile.
It is never a male student sharing a room with Methuselah.
It is rarely a female academic hosting a young man under similar terms.
Because grooming, at its core, is not just about sex. It is about the manipulation of need, ambition, and silence. And in academia, where hierarchies are steep and opportunities rare, the predator’s power is often wrapped in letters of recommendation.
What makes it more insidious is that the victims are adults—or so we assume. But age does not immunize one from imbalance. When your academic future depends on one signature, consent becomes currency, and silence becomes survival.
The Gatekeepers Are Not Innocent
Universities and funding bodies are not bystanders in this. They are often active enablers—turning a blind eye to inappropriate mentorships, brushing off complaints as “misunderstandings,” or quietly sidelining victims who speak up. Conferences are sponsored, research is published, fellowships awarded, and yet no one asks how certain students got access, or why the same professors are named in hushed tones year after year.
There are no clear reporting mechanisms, no meaningful protection for whistleblowers, and certainly no appetite for scandal. The institution protects its own, not its students. And the result? A silent, global network of abuse dressed up as academic excellence.
The Silence Ends Here
We must stop pretending that grooming is rare, or isolated, or “handled.” It is embedded in our education systems, from the first prize-giving ceremony to the final thesis defense. We need to listen differently, act quicker, and stop sacrificing young lives at the altar of institutional prestige.
Because if our brightest girls and women cannot find safety in the places meant to shape their futures, then what exactly are we building?
I hope the case of Alliance Girls does not become just another moment of hashtags and fleeting reflection. I hope it becomes a reckoning. A line in the sand. Because we must now find the courage to ask: What would justice look like for the girls and women who endured grooming—silently, fearfully, and alone? What can we do, as a society, about this collective hypocrisy of forgetting?
Because when girls or women excel academically, they should be safe—not sacrificed at the altar of prestige.
Muthoni Thangwa 