A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 40-year-old Kenyan domestic worker, Esther Wanja Muthoni, to 100 lashes for having sex outside marriage.
The sentence, handed down in October, followed several court hearings held and has left Muthoni afraid of the punishment while struggling to return to Kenya with her one-year-old son.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Muthoni had spent more than a year trying to leave Saudi Arabia with her child but was unable to do so because of the criminal proceedings against her.
“I am so afraid. I don’t think I can endure those lashes,” she told the newspaper in a telephone interview last month.
Muthoni, a mother of five, had been working legally as a domestic worker through Maharah Human Resources, a Saudi recruitment company, when she became pregnant following a brief relationship with an Egyptian man identified only as Mohamud.
She gave birth in August 2025 at staff accommodation. According to court documents reviewed by the newspaper, a supervisor discovered her and took her and the baby to a hospital, where police subsequently detained her for questioning over the pregnancy.
During questioning, Muthoni reportedly told the police that the child’s father had left Saudi Arabia. The court documents did not disclose his surname.
Although she was later released from police custody, she was reportedly denied access to her staff accommodation and a shelter, forcing her to live at a petrol station in Riyadh.
The location had become a meeting point for migrant mothers hoping to leave Saudi Arabia with their children.
In October, a three-judge panel found her guilty of having sex outside marriage and sentenced her to 100 lashes, a punishment prescribed under its interpretation of Islamic law.
