After raping teenaged Marie, three uniformed soldiers left her in a forest in Democratic Republic of Congo’s South Kivu province, where sexual violence is widespread.
”With the war, it was impossible to get to a hospital,” recalled the 17-year-old, between sobs brought on by the memory.
Once clashes in South Kivu had died down three months after the attack, Marie was able to seek treatment in the province’s major town of Bukavu, where she shortly afterwards had a miscarriage.
”Women and children are increasingly the targets of attacks by militia. Sexual violence against them continues on a large scale and has reached a very alarming level,” Iulia Motoc, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for DRC, said in a statement released in Geneva last week.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), thousands of women have come forward for medical help since aid workers moved deeper into rebel-held areas made accessible in recent months as a peace process in DRC takes hold.
By all accounts, all of the armed groups operating in eastern DRC have committed rape.
”We have never come across as many victims of rape in a conflict situation as we have now” in DRC, according to WFP spokesperson Christiane Berthiaume.
A recent study by several aid agencies showed that sexual violence often takes place alongside fighting and when different armed groups take new territory.
”Most of the time, rape is a form of reprisal: when a group takes a village, they punish the women they suspect of having collaborated with the group there before,” explained WFP’s Gertrude Mudekereza in Bukavu.
Superstition also plays a part: sex with young girls supposedly adds to a fighter’s invulnerability.
According to Human Rights Watch, almost 60% of combatants in the region are HIV positive.
”Thanks to a lull, (new) rape cases have become less frequent recently,” explained Henri Namwira, an official at Bukavu’s Panzi hospital, the main facility dealing with such cases.
”On the other hand, more and more women who were stuck in their villages because of the war are coming from distant places. They are very difficult cases because their infections are often very old, sometimes dating back a year,” he added.
The scars are both physical and psychological. Marie, for example, has healed physically, according to the doctor who treated her, Josee Yangoy.
But Yangoy cannot discharge her because she is still ”completely traumatised.”
There are about 50 women admitted for similar reasons to Panzi hospital.
Since March, 1 000 have passed through its modern buildings, 650 infected with sexually transmitted diseases, including Aids.
”We are taking in more and more young girls, sometimes younger than 10,” explained Namwira.
Once their work is done, medical teams steer patients to other centres offering psychological and social care.
One of these, housing 60 women, is run by Pauline ”Mama” London.
In her office, a converted shipping container, this dynamic woman pored over the case notes of recent arrivals.
”This one was raped nine months ago,” she said, pointing to a young woman.
”That one is pregnant and cannot face up to it,” she added, indicating another patient.
Some of the women have been raped several times, over several months by several armed men who kidnapped them and turned them into sex slaves.
”Those who called themselves my ‘husbands’ abused me for four months in the forest,” explained Bora Mushengezi, pregnant by one of the Rwandan Hutu fighters based in eastern DRC.
”It was only when fighting broke out and they had to flee that I was able to escape myself,” she recalled.
The stigma and taboo surrounding rape only add to the problems of dealing with the scourge.
”These women left their rural homes to escape their past and would prefer to die than go back to their villages,” said Mama London. – Sapa-AFP