On February the 4th 2022, dozens of thugs and goons violently forced their way into our home in an illegal 'land-grab' by an ex lawyer of ours and his wife. Their criminal goons looted the house, dumping stuff on the road, and stole half our household possessions by value. The “siege” lasted 2 days, but they never imagined that our Kenyan friends would gather with us, and we were safely evacuated, but are in an awful situation. After we filed a suit against them in the High Court, they tore our wooden family home of 33 years apart over 26th-27th February 2022 (see photo), stole, and sold it. As you can imagine, this is very distressing, and was a spiteful effort to prevent us from having a home to go back to.

Please see updates below which include the initial urgent court orders on 10th March 2022 to restore us to the plot, and a stay lifted on 21st April 2022 with further court orders. Please see also the fuller account of the siege and aftermath three paragraphs below, and updates as we post them.

We are sincerely grateful to those who have helped since financially or in kind with accommodation, storage, transport, and so many other things. Unfortunately, they are dragging this out (being lawyers, it does not cost them so much), and the main case on their forged papers continues. The £9,189 raised to April 2022 has now been spent on fighting them in court and initial security expenses, and we still need more help - if you can.

It would mean so much to us if you could support in any way needed and legal expenses are mounting, please donate through this page. Please could you also share the link with your friends and family to help support. For those in Kenya who would like to support, there is a special mpesa only number for donations: +254 707 099547 . Thank you for everyone's love and support during this very difficult time, please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers. ❤️

If we succeed fully in the court case in the end and are awarded damages, our aim is to use the equivalent of the donations to support other families in the future experiencing similar horrors.

Carolyn 15/3/22: A friend said to a me yesterday that ‘everything must be sorted out by now? You must be back at home?’ I imagine that might be what most people assume. The reality is rather different. One would have had to have been there that weekend to fully appreciate what our family & a few incredible friends went through over the course of 41 hours. It started on the Friday at 4.45pm, with no warning. An unknown man accompanied by a couple of Police officers forced their way into our kitchen; injuring me in the process, & when challenged refused to show any ID or authority. These 3 were immediately followed by a multitude of young thugs and looters, hired from the slums for 800 shillings worth of ‘work, plus whatever you can steal', I later found out. They ran through the house ripping down curtains & quickly & clumsily began upturning the contents of drawers & sweeping whatever was arranged on surfaces into a pile in the middle of them. In a chaotic few hours almost everything we own was thrown out into the road in a jumbled pile of damaged furniture, household paraphernalia & curtain bundles full of personal possessions; much of this was stolen in curtains or drawers. Encouraged to load our precious, personal items into our car our house help overheard that the plan was to have the car towed off the property when it was full then looted & stripped at another location.

By late evening my husband, elder son & myself were in our empty sitting room along with 5 fearless, loyal friends and neighbours who I will be eternally grateful to as without their witness and protection, things would have be so much worse. We had retreated to this relative safety as the criminal thugs, many of whom were ‘wired’ when they arrived, had spent the early evening rapidly consuming every drop of alcohol on the premises & were becoming noticeably more threatening. Our 85 year old neighbour & lawyer was told to ‘go home old man as you don't want to be around for what we are going to do next’. It was made abundantly clear that the level of violence would keep rising the longer we remained in our home, and it would get more violent and more personal (as was their plan); and the sooner they could get us out, the more they would get to loot. As the evening became night we tried repeatedly to get the police to come and protect us, without success, and the background noise of looting was made up of continued furniture removal alongside the thugs cooking noisily in our kitchen as they rooted around for more alcohol. The bathroom was locked to us & the power was cut. At one point we made our way to the guesthouse to use the bathroom & were met with more empty rooms, electrics ripped out of the ceiling & walls, plus the disgusting sight of the bathroom covered in human waste. Personal possessions were strewn all over the garden as well as hidden in flowerbeds for theft at a later opportunity.

The next day and the hours in it are a bit of a blur; a mix of no sleep & being in a constant state of exhausting terror. Other friends and family courageously visited at points in support and bringing food and bedding. Citizen TV came for about half an hour, and later a low loader & crew to forcibly take away our car filled with valuable, personal items. The only reason we still have our car & contents is because the crew were from the same village as a dear friend who had stayed with us throughout. She was able to persuade the crew to take the car to her home instead. It also turned out that they were horrified by what they were witnessing & had no intention of getting involved. By late afternoon the situation had escalated & the 4 of us who remained knew that our well-being was in question as they were closing in on us at dusk. Conrad Thorpe arrived in the nick of time with a number of armed CPOs (Close Protection Officers) we had engaged on a friend's recommendation, & my husband, myself & our eldest son endured a second night on the floor in fitful sleep.

Sunday turned out, ironically, to be the most violent of the three. Initially there had been relative calm as the 3 of us scoured the garden for the means to make tea & took stock of what little was left amongst the evident bomb site. At about 09.30 I became aware of a loud commotion down near the gate but I could not see what was happening from my kitchen window vantage point. Maybe I am grateful to not have these images rolling over & over in my head as my husband & son do. For what was playing out 40 metres away turned out to be the thugs final push. A multitude of boda boda criminal gangs had been hired from the slums & had congregated at an appointed hour already well dosed with drugs & alcohol. This violent mob launched themselves at the chained gate & proceeded to find means with which to scale it & ammunition with which to bombard my husband & son who were holding the gate firm with their bare hands & all their strength. Obviously this was futile and increasingly dangerous to life & limb, so with bloodied hands they both made their way back to the house so that we could gather the animals inside one of the bedrooms close to a safe room while the CPOs assessed the situation. A 30 minute stay was agreed to allow police to respond but I think we had realised at this point that we were on our own & that only one option was open to us in order to avoid bloodshed. So 41 hours after our ordeal had started the 3 of us, alongside our 4 animals, walked in single file with armed & drawn CPOs at the front & rear of us, from our home of nearly 34 years.

In the following weeks of poor and fractured sleep, I would discover that the contents of the remaining curtain bundles was such an unbelievable mess that I can only think to liken it to a giant picking up our home, giving it a thorough shaking & then upturning the resulting muddle into random containers; broken eggs & smashed honey jars mixed in with linen, ornaments, cracked picture frames & our 3 children’s memories. Almost six weeks later we are still sorting through the mess, while continuing to support the 4 Kenyan families who depend upon us for a living. Meanwhile, the broken & damaged furniture lies stacked in a container waiting for us to have the time to deal with it.