A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced Esther Wanja Muthoni, a 40-year-old Kenyan domestic worker, to 100 lashes for having sex outside marriage after she gave birth to a child in the kingdom.
The sentence, handed down in October after several court hearings last summer, has left Muthoni fearing for her safety as she struggles to return to Kenya with her one-year-old son, Abudy.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Muthoni had spent more than a year trying to leave Saudi Arabia with her child but could not do so because of the legal case against her.
“I am so afraid,” she told the newspaper in a telephone interview last month.
“I don’t think I can endure those lashes,” she said.
Muthoni, a mother of five, was working legally as a domestic worker through Maharah Human Resources, a Saudi recruitment company, when she became pregnant after a brief relationship with an Egyptian resident identified only as Mohamud.
She gave birth in August 2025 at staff accommodation. According to court documents reviewed by the newspaper, a supervisor found her and took her and the baby to a hospital, after which police detained her for questioning about the pregnancy.
Muthoni told the police that the child’s father had left Saudi Arabia. The court documents did not give his surname.
Although she was released from police custody, she was reportedly denied access to both her staff accommodation and a shelter.
She then lived at a petrol station in Riyadh that had become a gathering place for migrant mothers hoping to leave the country with their children.
The New York Times said its investigation published last year had documented the difficulties faced by East African domestic workers who became pregnant in Saudi Arabia, including the bureaucratic obstacles that prevent them from obtaining documents for their children and returning home.
After the newspaper’s earlier report on Muthoni’s situation, Maharah provided her with accommodation, and the Kenyan Embassy issued documents intended to allow her to leave Saudi Arabia.
However, she was still unable to travel while her criminal case was pending.
The newspaper reported that Muthoni was given a court interpreter but had no lawyer during the proceedings. The court documents it reviewed also contained no indication that she had legal representation.
Although indigent defendants in Saudi Arabia are entitled to state-sponsored lawyers, experts told the newspaper that criminal trials sometimes go ahead without legal representation, including in some cases that carry the death penalty.
In October, the three-judge panel found Muthoni guilty of having sex outside marriage and imposed the 100 lashes prescribed under its interpretation of Islamic law.
The judgment did not indicate that authorities had pursued the child’s father.
Labor migration analyst Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, who founded the nonprofit organization Do Bold, condemned the punishment, stating that it breached international human rights standards.
She told the newspaper, “This sentence of flogging does not align with international human rights standards.”
She went on to say that the punishment robbed Muthoni of her dignity rather than safeguarding a vulnerable woman.
The case has also prompted doubts about Saudi Arabia’s assertions of legal and social reform, especially its 2020 announcement of limits on flogging.
The New York Times observed that rulings in morality cases were not regularly made public, which makes it hard to determine how often courts still handed down the punishment.
Saudi Arabia’s judicial system rests on Islamic law, or sharia, yet the kingdom has no written penal code.
Judges thus interpret Islamic law when deciding criminal cases, which leaves some offenses and their punishments open to varying interpretations.
Muthoni did not challenge the judgment, explaining that she wanted to go home to her other children.
“It is the only way that can take me back home to my children,” she said.
Besides the lashes, the court handed her a sentence of one year of banishment. The newspaper reported that Saudi regulations generally permit a person sentenced to banishment to be sent to another city within the kingdom when the judgment names no destination.
It is still unclear whether the order means Muthoni will be deported to Kenya. Her exit documents have also expired, leaving it uncertain how she and her son will get home.
The Saudi and Kenyan governments, along with representatives of Maharah, did not answer The New York Times’ requests for comment.
An earlier investigation by the newspaper found that East African women recruited as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia reported physical abuse, sexual violence, unpaid wages, and abandonment.
It also reported that some Kenyan women who fell pregnant while working in the kingdom had difficulty obtaining birth certificates for their children, while diplomats who could have helped them were accused of ignoring their cases or demanding bribes and sexual favors.
