RIYADH (The Thursday Times) — A court in Riyadh has sentenced a 40-year-old Kenyan domestic worker to 100 lashes and a year of banishment after convicting her of sex outside marriage, following the birth of her son, according to an investigation by a US newspaper and rights groups who have condemned the ruling.
Esther Wanja Muthoni, a mother of five who was recruited to work in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper and nanny, was convicted in October after hearings over the summer, the reports said. She attended court with a translator but without a lawyer.
“I am so afraid. I don’t think I can endure those lashes,” she told the newspaper. “I don’t deserve this.”
Saudi authorities have not commented publicly on the case.
How the case began
Muthoni became pregnant after a brief relationship with an Egyptian man, who she says has since left the country, and gave birth to a boy in her staff accommodation in August 2025, according to the reports. A supervisor took mother and child to a hospital, where staff alerted the authorities, and police then questioned her.
She had been trying for more than a year to return to Kenya with her son. At one point she lived at a petrol station where other migrant mothers had gathered, the reports said. Her recruitment agency later gave her housing, and the Kenyan embassy issued travel documents, but she could not leave while the case was open and the documents have since expired.
Rights groups react
Maryam Aldossari, acting director of the UK-based rights group ALQST, called the sentence an act of violence and said the woman should have been sent home, not punished.
Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, founder of Do Bold, which advocates for migrant workers in the Gulf, said hospitals are required to report single women who give birth, so most unmarried migrant mothers give birth at home to avoid detection.
Saudi Arabia announced in 2020 that it would end flogging as a punishment for offences where judges have discretion. Rights groups say flogging remains possible for certain fixed punishments under Islamic law, including for sex outside marriage.
The case comes after a planned visit to the kingdom by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, was postponed last week. She has said she will raise specific cases with the authorities.
Saudi Arabia is home to millions of migrant workers, including large numbers from Pakistan, Kenya, and other countries in Asia and Africa.
