The Star Ledger

County prosecutors label federal cuts 'catastrophic'

Friday, March 07, 2008

BY JONATHAN CASIANO

Star-Ledger Staff

New Jersey prosecutors are facing deep funding cuts for victim assistance programs that could result in fewer services for crime victims, more work for beleaguered investigators and the breakdown of a support system that has taken 25 years to build.

Last month, county prosecutors were told their annual grants for victim's assistance are being slashed by 68 percent due to a substantial cut in federal aid and a new funding formula devised by the state Division of Criminal Justice. In some high-crime counties, the cuts are even deeper, reaching 73 percent in Union and Passaic counties and 75 percent in Camden County.

The cuts will directly impact the prosecutors' victim-witness advocacy units, which provide an array of support services ranging from accompanying victims to trial to assisting with restitution claims. They also inform victims when an arrest has been made, coordinate victim support groups and respond to immediate safety needs, like installing new locks on a burglary victim's door.

With much of the federal funding going directly to victim advocate salaries, prosecutors are now grasping for ways to keep their victim assistance programs intact.

"I would describe this as a catastrophe," said Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow, whose eight-person unit serves roughly 250 new victims each month.

Richard Pompelio, executive director of the New Jersey Crime Victims Law Center and former chairman of the state Victims of Crime Compensation Board, takes that sentiment a step further.

"This is literally the worst thing that has happened to victims' rights in the history of New Jersey," he said.

A product of the victims' rights movement of the early 1980s, New Jersey's victim-witness advocacy units were created by the Legislature in 1985 to administer the support and outreach services that too often fell by the wayside during the investigation and prosecution of crimes. The units are funded by grants from the federal Crime Victims Fund, which gets its money from criminal fines, forfeited bail bonds and penalty fees.

In the beginning, New Jersey's units were little more than a "desk, an office and an empty filing cabinet," Pompelio said, with scarcely any staff trained specifically in victim advocacy. But over the past two decades, the 21 county units have become the backbone of the state's victim support system, delivering 27 state-mandated services as well as a laundry list of additional services, like flying the bodies of immigrant murder victims back home for burial.

"They've literally taken these offices and developed them, developed them, developed them by being the trenches every day, seeing victims and dealing with their needs," Pompelio said. "One of the greatest assets the victims' rights community has in New Jersey are these amazing, talented people who manage these offices."

Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said these services not only comfort victims coping with sudden tragedy, but also make it more likely they will cooperate with the prosecutors and investigators working their cases.

"The victim witness services help us in holding intact victims and witnesses who otherwise would fall by the wayside and would not come forward," said Dow, whose victim-witness unit served more than 10,000 victims last year. "This office provides immediate needs for them at the time when they are most vulnerable and by bringing them into the law enforcement family ... it ultimately helps our prosecutions."

The state Division of Criminal Justice, which administers the federal grant, blames Washington for cutting New Jersey's victim assistance grant by 22 percent, from 10.4 million last year to $8 million this year. However, of all the victims' assistance programs funded by the federal grant -- including programs run by the attorney general and local nonprofits -- the county victim-witness units are the only ones seeing substantial cuts.

Attorney General Anne Milgram said the brunt of the cut was passed on to the counties because of a new funding formula that awards money based on county population, crime statistics and the volume of victims. With federal funding in decline for the second straight year, Milgram said it was important to create a formula that quantified each office's actual needs.

Milgram said she recently met with President George W. Bush and U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to ask for the cuts to be restored, and pledged to continue petitioning the federal government for full funding.

"The federal cuts are devastating. You won't hear me or anyone else in my office say the cuts are acceptable because they're not," Milgram said. "We need this program and I made that pitch very hard. I hope they heard us."

Milgram said the cuts will not prevent the county units from fulfilling their mandated duties, but prosecutors say that's exactly what will happen.

Romankow said if the cuts go through, his victim-witness unit will go from eight employees to three. Dow said she may have to eliminate successful new initiatives involving child abuse victims, and domestic violence victims going through municipal court.

Elaine O'Neal has been Union County's victim-witness coordinator for 13 years and knows the job's demands as well as anyone. On a given day, O'Neal might spend the day in court with an assault victim, and the evening leading a support group for the families of murder victims. In between, she can be found watching victims' children while they attend a hearing, or handing out McDonald's coupons to a family trapped all day in court. If a victim walks in off the street to inquire about their case, O'Neal likely handles that as well.

"If somebody was robbed and they don't have food we can give them money for food or set up a food bank service for them. We can provide transportation for court proceedings; we offer baby-sitting in our office," O'Neal explained. "These are just the little things that you wouldn't normally think of -- that no one would think of -- that we do because they're big things for someone else."

Alan Meltzer knows the value of those services firsthand. A 64-year-old limousine driver from Clark, Meltzer's son Joshua was killed in 2003 when a wanted man shot him in the head after a car accident in Elizabeth.

"I was a mess back then," Meltzer said. "I never knew anyone who'd been murdered."

Meltzer came to court every day during the trial, but it wasn't until he joined the victims' support group moderated by O'Neal that he met others who understood the magnitude of his loss.

More than four years after his son's death, Meltzer still attends the Monday night meetings and says it would be an "injustice" to eliminate such services.

"People can say 'I know how you feel,' but you don't know how I feel unless it's happened to you," Meltzer said. "The group makes it go easier. It's helping me."

Jonathan Casiano may be reached at (908) 527-4012 or jcasiano@starledger.com.

© 2008  The Star Ledger

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Rape Victims Can Be Hurt Financially, Too

It's tough enough for rape victims to come forward. Now there's another reason for them to think twice about reporting the crime: They may get stuck with a hefty bill for the rape kit used to collect evidence against their attacker.

Talk about adding insult to injury. In a story last week in the Raleigh News & Observer, reporter Mandy Locke described the situation in North Carolina, where "the vast majority of the 3,000 or so emergency room patients examined for sexual assaults each year shoulder some of the cost of a rape kit test." A state victims compensation fund intended to help cover the bills is woefully underfunded and had capped payouts for the $1,600 test at $1,000. Since Locke's story ran, "The cap has been lifted," says North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety spokesperson Patty McQuillan, though she noted that the legislature would still have to provide the additional funds.

Chalk one up for the power of the press to shine a bright light into dark corners and encourage change. But the News & Observer story made me wonder—just how big and dark is this particular corner? Is this a national phenomenon or is the practice limited to one state?

Turns out experts on sexual assault are all too familiar with the issue. "It's been a problem for a long time," says Ilse Knecht, deputy director of public policy at the National Center for Victims of Crime. "We've heard so many stories of victims paying for their exams, or not being able to and then creditors coming after them." In order to qualify for federal grants under the Violence Against Women Act, states have to assume the full out-of-pocket costs for forensic medical exams, as the rape kits are called. But according to a 2004 bulletin published by the NCVC, "[F]eedback from the field indicates that sexual assault victims are still being billed." Knecht says she's recently heard from caseworkers in Illinois, Georgia, and Arkansas reporting that rape victims continue to be charged for their forensic exams.

The rape kit itself generally contains bags to collect clothing, test tubes for collecting blood, swabs for fluid, and a comb to collect pubic hair. Small-change stuff. But exams also involve administering tests for pregnancy, HIV, gonorrhea, and syphilis, and that's where the costs add up, says Randall Brown, medical director for the Baton Rouge Rape Crisis Center in Louisiana.

How forensic exam costs are handled varies. In some locations, hospitals bill patients' insurance and absorb whatever the insurers don't pay or bill patients for the balance. Some states have special funds to cover a portion of the costs. Others require convicted offenders to pay into a fund to reimburse the costs of the exams.

No one I spoke with tried to defend the practice of billing rape victims for their exams. Predictably, people cited a host of problems—from bureaucratic inefficiency to chronic underfunding of victim compensation funds—that partially explain but don't excuse it. Ironically, the nature of rape may actually make it more likely that victims will be billed for the evidence-gathering exam. Unlike a break-in, where police gather forensic evidence at the victim's home and send it directly to the crime lab, in rape the victim's body is the scene of the crime. In these cases, "there's a crossover between medical care and forensic care," says Brown.

Fair enough. Processing the evidence of a rape is complicated. But unless we can do a better job ensuring that rape victims don't have to pay for that evidentiary exam, we're victimizing them all over again.
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Police: Teen Gang Ran Prostitution Ring

January 16, 2008

By ANGELA K. BROWN

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - Several teenage gang members have been arrested on suspicion of forcing girls as young as 12 into a prostitution ring, police said Tuesday.

After befriending the girls and getting them high, Varrio Central gang members took them to some regular customers and then sought other men by trolling apartment complexes, offering the girls' services for $50, Fort Worth police Lt. Ken Dean said.

The gang apparently targeted runaways and other girls with unstable homes, and if the girls refused to have sex for money the members beat and sexually assaulted them and threatened their families, Dean said.

"The age of the victims and suspects is the surprising part of it," Dean said. "To have such young individuals in a somewhat organized business, a forced prostitution ring, is somewhat alarming and such a horrendous crime against the 12- to 16-year-old girls."

Detectives found five victims, ages 12 to 16, but believe there may be more. Those girls are back with relatives or in other safe places, he said, declining to elaborate.

A 15-year-old girl who may be a gang member helped the group by going to the victims' houses to pick them up under the pretense of going shopping or to a movie, which fooled the parents, said Lt. Dan Draper.

Four alleged gang members were arrested Jan. 3 after they took a 14-year-old to a convenience store to have sex with the owner, a regular customer of the prostitution ring, police said.

Diego Rodriguez, 19, and Martin Reyes, 17, were charged with counts including engaging in organized criminal activity, aggravated kidnapping and trafficking of a person. Rodriguez, held on $170,000 bond, did not have an attorney, and a lawyer for Reyes, held on $150,000 bond, could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday.

The cases of two boys, ages 15 and 16, and the 15-year-old girl accused of helping the gang are being handled in the juvenile system. Police expect more arrests as the investigation continues, Dean said.

The convenience store owner, Chang Hyeong Lee, 56, was charged with aggravated kidnapping, engaging in organized criminal activity and prostitution. He remained jailed Tuesday with bail set at $300,000. His attorney could not immediately be reached.

Police discovered the prostitution ring after a woman was caught in August in a neighborhood allegedly offering men sex for $50 with a 14-year-old girl. Police have declined to reveal the relationship between Debra Flores Castillo, 33, who was charged with compelling prostitution, and the teen gang members.

She was released on a $20,000 bond. Her attorney, Mark Scott, declined to comment.

Jorge Martinez, accused of paying for sex with the teen in August, remained jailed on $10,000 bond Tuesday on a sexual assault of a child charge. His attorney did not immediately return a call.
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

January 15, 2008

 
Coming to a Truck Stop Near You
Child prostitutes in the U.S.
By Anne Morse

Fourteen-year-old Cara and her 15-year-old cousin, Stacy (not their real names) walked out of their homes in Toledo, Ohio on a rainy May day in 2005 to get milkshakes. A few blocks away, a couple driving a Lincoln Continental pulled alongside the cousins and asked if they wanted a lift. Believing the man’s claim to be a schoolmate’s father, the girls stepped into the car — and entered a nightmare world of sexual slavery.

The couple drove the girls to a house and locked them in. As their families frantically searched for them, the teens were sold over and over again at area hotels. Ten days into their captivity the girls were taken to a truck stop near Ann Arbor, Michigan, where police officers, acting on a prostitution tip, discovered Stacy and one of her captors in a truck. Because of her youth, police took Stacy into custody, and later rescued Cara.

We’re used to hearing about sexual slavery in other countries, like Thailand and India. But these were homegrown, corn-fed, All-American girls being raped by All-American men. There’s no need to fly overseas on sex tourism junkets anymore: Girls and boys as young as 12 are available right here in the USA — the more modest estimates running at around 100,000 of them. Some, like Cara and Stacy, are kidnapped into the brutal world of sex slavery. Others — runaways and girls exploited by older “boyfriends” — are seduced into it. Some victims unknowingly encounter pimps online, and when they meet these new “friends” at malls and parks, they’re drugged and then kidnapped. Pimps often move their human cargo across the country, making it difficult for girls to contact their families.

Former congresswoman Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International, an organization that rescues and assists women and girls forced into prostitution worldwide, says a pimp can easily make over $600,000 a year selling underage girls, making the peddling of human flesh more profitable than selling drugs. Living conditions are about what you’d expect for slaves: Girls are chained up in basements, or locked into closets. Those who try to escape are beaten, raped, and tortured.

Who buys children? Truckers, who seek out “Lot Lizards,” as they’re called, at truck stops. Executives who visit Atlanta or Las Vegas for conventions. Political activists who travel to Washington for meetings.

Shared Hope has created a DVD (the video contains some graphic content) outlining the extent of domestic minor sex trafficking. Visit their website and watch “Jessica” describe how she fell into prostitution at the age of 12, selling herself for a place to sleep at night. Or listen in on a conversations between a pimp and a man he believes wants to purchase a young girl — a man who is secretly recording their negotiations:

Pimp: “What type of girl do you want? Black, white, or what?

Buyer: “How many young ones do you have?”

Pimp: “Two black, two white.”

Buyer: “And how old are they?”

Pimp: “They’re between 14 and seventeen.”

Buyer: “What color is the 14-year-old?”

Pimp: “She’s white.”

Buyer: “Okay, white is good.”

Pimp: “If you pay the price, you can get what you want.”

Tragically, many people know children are being trafficked, but do nothing about it. When Linda Smith spent a few nights on the streets of Las Vegas last year researching the extent of child sex trafficking, she saw men openly handing out cards featuring young girls in sexual poses and a telephone number to call if they wanted a child delivered to their hotel. She saw “Little girls draped over men who were old enough to be their grandfathers at 4 A.M.” — clearly trafficking victims. “Everyone from cops to hotel concierges, to truck stop security guards, to those who deliver room service, to taxi drivers who know they’re delivering little girls to their abusers know what’s going on” but turn a blind eye, Smith told me grimly. “We call it the culture of tolerance.”

It’s partly a problem of perception. Society tends to view prostitutes, even child prostitutes, as whores, Smith says. “The reason good people can ignore these girls is because in their minds, she’s not a rape victim, or a lost child, but a ‘bad girl.’” As for those who exploit them — the attitude is typically “boys will be boys;” cops often don’t arrest buyers because they don’t want to get them into trouble.

What drives the sexual enslavement of America’s children? Pornography. Child porn has increased exponentially in both volume and violence since digital cameras and the Internet have made it easy to create and distribute it, according to Shared Hope. “Eighty-five percent of those arrested for sex crimes say ‘I started with porn,” Smith notes.

The sex industry “needs a new generation of buyers,” which is why so much Internet porn is directed at young boys: It’s intended to create more product demand. (Think the “Joe Camel” campaign, with addiction to children, not cigarettes, the intended goal.) The U.S. Senate last Friday (January 11) "Human Trafficking Awareness Day" with the goal of educating Americans regarding the extent of this human crisis and the need to find creative ways to stop the buying and selling of children locally.

To help Americans do this, Shared Hope has created The Defenders USA, a network of men, now more than 1,500-strong, who sign a pledge committing themselves to abstaining from porn and protecting their families and communities against sexual exploitation. Beginning on Father’s Day, 2007, in an effort to humanize the victims, the Defenders ran public service announcements and hit the nation’s truck stops in a campaign called “She Has A Name — And It Is Not Lot Lizard,” asking truck drivers to join them in protecting young women against sexual predators. They tack up posters, pass out law enforcement phone numbers and call police themselves if they see someone who appears to be a trafficking victim. Shared Hope also works with dozens of human trafficking task forces across the country, partnering with the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Their goal: To combat sex trafficking of domestic children through more aggressive arrest and prosecution of pimps and the child abusers with whom they do business.

The DOJ has created materials to train first responders — law enforcement officers, child protective services, 911 operators — to recognize trafficking victims, Smith says. Girls who escape sexual bondage desperately need medical care, long-term counseling, and a place to live. To help meet this need, Shared Hope provides grants to shelters and youth outreach organizations specifically for trafficking victims.

Sadly, official efforts will never be enough to prevent the buying and selling of our children. This is a war in which millions of ordinary Americans “need to be willing to get their hands bloodied in battle,” Smith maintains. We all need to learn how to recognize a trafficked child, and be willing to contact authorities if we encounter one.

Cara and Stacy are recovering from their ordeal. But for hundreds of thousands of other all-American girls caught in the web of sexual slavery, the nightmare continues. “They are in every city,” Smith says. “They are being sold at truck stops, strip joints, massage parlors and often out of homes, marketed online or on the streets. But they are our little girls. And they need our help.”

 — Anne Morse is a senior writer at BreakPoint, a division of Prison Fellowship. She contributes to “The Point,” a blog devoted to the discussion of culture, politics and religion.
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Wall Street Journal

Victims' Aid Is Budget Casualty

Funding Cuts to Hit
Local Programs;
Phantom Savings

By GARY FIELDS
January 8, 2008; Page A10

WASHINGTON -- In drafting the government's 2008 budget, Congress cut back on funding for a Justice Department program to aid crime victims, capping it at $590 million, $35 million less than last year.

But because the money for the Crime Victims Fund program doesn't come from taxpayer dollars, restricting it doesn't generate actual savings.

•  The Cut: Congress reduced spending from a fund dedicated to crime-victim programs, which isn't supported by tax revenue.

•  The Issue: The $35 million cut means local programs such as crime-victim shelters will have less money.

•  What's Next: Victims-rights advocates and some members of Congress want the money increased in the 2009 budget.

Some lawmakers say the cut was made just to give the appearance of fiscal restraint -- at the expense of the people who seek help at victim-support centers.

Including the numbers in the omnibus bill is “smoke and mirrors,” charges Republican Rep. Ted Poe of Texas. “The number is lower in the budget, so the budget shows a saving, but that’s a farce.”

The cut has sparked a scramble among some victims-rights groups to get the funds reinstated, although most concede that little can be done until the next budget is completed in about a year. Until then, the losers from this move will likely be victim-support programs, especially those at the local level.

The fund was set up by Congress in 1984 as part of the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. Its revenue comes from fines, forfeitures and fees levied against federal criminal offenders. The 4,400 local agencies and groups that the fund supports provide such things as shelters for domestic-violence victims to counseling services for victims of child abuse.

Until 2000, the amount of funds distributed depended on collections from the previous year. In 1999, three huge criminal settlements, including $500 million paid by Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., pushed the fund to $985 million for the year. That led Congress to cap annual spending and reserve any excess to supplement the fund in leaner years.

Mr. Poe estimates there is currently about $1.7 billion in the fund. He has introduced a bill that would prohibit Congress from including the fund as part of the federal budget.

State programs are last on the list of those receiving money from the fund, after other areas deemed more critical, such as victim-assistance staff at FBI offices. Even before the current cap reduction, money for state grants had been dropping, from $395.9 million in 2006 to $370.6 million in 2007. With the lowering of the cap and increased costs in other programs, state grants will drop to $328.5 million this year.

"The impact will vary from state to state and program to program, but at some point this will take its toll," says Steve Derene, executive director of the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators. "Some programs will close, and some will turn victims away."

In Iowa, for example, the state-local grants will drop to $3.5 million, compared with $3.9 million in 2007, and will result in a 10% to 15% cut in each grant, according to an analysis done by Marti Anderson, director of the state's Crime Victim Assistance Division, and released by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller. In addition, some staff who run victims' programs will be cut, as will the number of counseling sessions received by rape and domestic-violence victims, according to the analysis.

Congress's recent move follows several attempts in previous years by Bush administration budget writers to divert surplus funds above the cap into the Treasury Department's general fund, opening the way for the money to be used for programs other than victims' services. Members of Congress have rejected those attempts.

In its initial budget request for 2008, the Bush administration asked for $625 million. Members in the House suggested increasing the cap to $635 million. Advocates surmise that when various committees eventually began imposing across-the-board cuts, they didn't exclude the Victims Fund, even though it isn't part of the government's general-revenue pool.

"I don't know whether there's anything that can be done prior to the next budget," says Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona. He is concerned that domestic-violence shelters and rape crisis centers will be closed, along with crime-victim legal clinics, which provide free services. "It's taken a long time to get those started. They will be among the first cuts," he says.

Some activists say they will push Congress to revisit the cap when they return this month, but Mr. Derene agrees with Sen. Kyl that it is too late for 2008. He says lobbying efforts are likely to focus on 2009 spending.

"From what I hear, there could be a supplemental appropriations bill, but that wouldn't happen until some time in the spring, which would be too late for state assistance programs," Mr. Derene says.

Write to Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com
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The New York Times

January 5, 2008

Justices to Decide if Rape of a Child Merits Death

By Linda Greenhouse

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Constitution allows the death penalty for the rape of a child.

The justices acted only three days before a scheduled argument in another important death penalty case, on the standard for judging whether chemicals used to administer lethal injections make that method of execution unconstitutionally cruel.

The new case, from Louisiana, is likely to be argued in April, meaning that during the course of its current term, the Supreme Court will be examining both the most common method of execution and a categorical question about which crimes are appropriate for the death penalty.

No one has been executed in the United States for a crime other than murder since 1964. Of some 3,300 inmates of death row today, only two are facing execution for an offense that did not involve a killing. Both are on Louisiana’s death row. The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from one of them, Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004 for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

In 1977, as part of its wide-ranging re-examination of capital punishment, the Supreme Court prohibited the death penalty for rape. While that ruling, Coker v. Georgia, did not specifically discuss the rape of a child — the victim, although only 16, was a married woman who was raped at knifepoint — the decision has been widely understood as limiting the death penalty to the crime of murder.

In the principal opinion in the Coker case, Justice Byron R. White wrote that “we have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.”

But in recent years, a handful of states, responding to public outcries about sex crimes against children, have amended their death penalty statutes to make the rape of a child a capital offense. Louisiana was the first to do so, amending its death-penalty law in 1995 to apply to the rape of a child under the age of 12. The other states with similar provisions are Georgia, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. Unlike Louisiana, most limit the death penalty to defendants who were previously convicted of sexual assault against a child.

The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected Mr. Kennedy’s appeal last year in a 64-page opinion that concluded that “rape of a child under the age of 12 years of age is like no other crime” and that death was not a disproportionate punishment. Taking note of the recent state laws, the court said there was “compelling” evidence of a national trend toward treating the crime as distinct from others.

The United States Supreme Court’s recent death penalty jurisprudence has paid close attention to evidence of whether contemporary society has reached a consensus on particular applications of capital punishment. The court relied on such an analysis to rule out the death penalty for mentally retarded defendants in 2002 and for juvenile killers in 2005. Louisiana is now invoking the same approach to argue that an application of the death penalty once widely deemed unconstitutional has become permissible.

Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers are arguing that any such “trend” is illusory. “By any objective measure,” their brief says, Mr. Kennedy’s sentence “is not only cruel and unusual; it is cruel and unique.”

The other inmate is Richard Davis, who was sentenced to death on Dec. 12 for sexually molesting a 5-year-old girl.

The appeal, Kennedy v. Louisiana, No. 07-343, was filed by lawyers from the Capital Appeals Project, in New Orleans; the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic; and a New Orleans law firm, Adams and Reese.

Among other briefs filed at the court on Mr. Kennedy’s behalf was one from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, arguing that the Louisiana law presents “an intolerably high risk” that innocent defendants will be put to death. The reason, the group asserts, is that testimony by children, who are usually the principal witnesses in child rape cases, is often unreliable.

Another brief, from social workers and organizations working with sexual assault victims, describes the Louisiana law, with its broad definition of rape and its drastic penalty, as counterproductive and likely to lead to under reporting of offenses, especially within families.
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DC Sniper's Ex-Wife Creates Organization For Domestic Violence Survivors

Mildred Muhammad is a domestic violence survivor with a story to tell the world.

Many know her first and foremost by her former husband, John Allen Muhammad – the convicted DC sniper who terrorized the Washington DC metro region in late 2002. However, many are not aware that the reasons for the horrific attacks on innocent women, children and men in the DC Metro area, originated from John Allen Muhammad’s stalking and the control tactics he used on Mildred, his former wife, whom he sought to find and kill before, during and after the divorce.

After almost five years of silence, Mildred speaks openly about her day-to-day experiences as a survivor of domestic violence, how it affected her three children and the lives of many other women, men and children.
and the depths of its terror.

It is not just "a" story – it is "one of the many" stories built on the experiences of domestic violence and the depths of its terror. After her children were kidnapped and her inability to go on living without them, as well as her triumphant struggle to get through the months parental full custody, fleeing from her estranged husband and moving to Maryland with the children to flea the area, the horrific sniper shootings, sitting through court proceedings during the trial, and last but not least the beginning of regaining her strength to start a non profit organization, After The Trauma, to help other survivors. She’s written a book about the experiences to share with the world the details of how she survived “After The Trauma”.

Keeping her promise to help other survivors after her personal situation, Mildred began After The Trauma, Inc., as the Executive Director, and speaks to the survivors of Domestic Violence, organizations and is striving to enlighten more people to this cause as a means to get the information out to the public on ways to help survivors after their domestic violence experiences. She is not only speaking to them, but wants to help them through their individual situations. She is always available for those who need her most, because she understands, first hand.

"Sometimes it is just not enough to hear the words that someone truly understands the situation and is asking you to “hold” or “wait” – this is the powerful difference in knowing first hand what needs to be offered to domestic violence survivor from a domestic violence survivor,” says Mildred Muhammad.

After The Trauma, non-profit's mission is to provide assistance to domestic violence survivors. Through nine programs from mentoring and education to transportation - After The Trauma creates a way to help survivors face their next day, and an even greater need to rebuild their lives.

"Our primary objective is creating a place to house their growing needs. I believe we can make a difference to these women and their children. It starts one day at a time …the tragic stories would alarm anyone … but I understand, because I’ve lived through it… and I want to help the survivors through it,” says Muhammad.

For more information on After The Trauma, please visit http://www.afterthetrauma.org.
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December 13, 2007

Fury Rising Over Lenience in Gang Rape of Aboriginal Girl

By TIM JOHNSTON

SYDNEY, Australia — Mounting anger over the handling of the gang rape of a 10-year-old indigenous girl has pushed the plight of Australia’s Aboriginal minority to the top of the country’s political agenda, leaving the new government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd scrambling for solutions to one of the country’s most intractable problems.

The case has provoked accusations in the news media that there is one law for white Australians and another for Aborigines.

On Wednesday, the newly appointed federal minister for indigenous affairs, Jenny Macklin, suggested that the federal government might consider intervening in Queensland State, where the crime took place, in the same way the federal government did in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory this year amid concerns about child abuse. Ms. Macklin said she wanted to discuss possible approaches with Anna Bligh, the premier of Queensland.

“It would be very helpful for the two of us to get together as soon as possible to discuss what we have learned from the Northern Territory intervention and what issues might be useful to be implemented in Queensland,” Ms. Macklin told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The rape of the 10-year-old girl, whose name has not been made public, took place in April 2006 in Aurukun, on Cape York, on Australia’s northeastern tip. Nine male Aborigines pleaded guilty, but none have been sent to prison. The three older defendants — ages 17, 18 and 26 at the time of the crime — were given six-month suspended sentences last month. The younger six, whose ages were not made public, were put on probation for 12 months in October.

Noel Pearson, a resident of Cape York and a prominent Aboriginal leader, said he believed that chronic leniency toward offenders had contributed to social breakdown and to the abuse and neglect of children. “This is the tip of a tragic iceberg. It is a problem that has been going on for a long time. It is a problem we have been trying to highlight for a long time,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The case has forced non-Aboriginal Australians to re-examine their relationship with the continent’s original inhabitants. It has given extra impetus to discussions about whether the new government should issue a formal apology for past injustices like the “stolen generation,” Aboriginal children who were taken from their parents, a practice that ended less than 40 years ago.

Mr. Rudd’s Labor government, which has been in power less than two weeks, has promised to overturn the policy of his predecessor, John Howard, who refused to apologize for the treatment of Aborigines, fearing it could prompt claims for compensation.

Aborigines, who make up just under 3 percent of the population of 21 million, are among Australia’s most disadvantaged groups. Their average life expectancy is 17 years less than the national average, according to official figures. They are 13 times more likely to be incarcerated, three times more likely to be unemployed and twice as likely to be a victim of violence or threatened violence, such figures show.
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December 12, 2007

System ‘Failed’ Young Rape Victim

December 17, 2007

Saudi King Pardons Rape Victim: Report

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday.

The victim's husband welcomed the news, but said he had not been informed officially of the pardon decree.

"I'm happy and my wife is happy and it will of course help lift some of her psychological and social suffering," he told Reuters. "We thank the king for his generous attention and fatherly spirit."

The 19-year-old Shi'ite woman was abducted and raped along with a male companion by seven men last year in a case that piled international pressure on the government to step in.

Ruling according to the strict Saudi reading of Islamic law, a court sentenced the woman to 90 lashes for being alone with an unrelated man and the rapists to jail terms of up to five years.

The Supreme Judicial Council last month increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two years and nine years in prison.

By pardoning the woman, the royal decree appears to be upholding the original guilty verdict.

In Washington, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino welcomed the move. "This is a decision that King Abdullah needed to make on behalf of Saudi Arabia, and we think it was the right one."

President George W. Bush said earlier this month that King Abdullah "knows our position loud and clear" on the case, and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said in Washington last month he hoped the ruling would be changed."

KING HAS RIGHT TO PARDON

Al-Jazirah newspaper cited Justice Minister Abdullah bin Mohammad al-Sheikh as saying the king had the right to issue a pardon in the "public interest," though he defended the legal system's "integrity, justice and transparency."

The minister did not confirm that the pardon, reported from unnamed sources, had been issued but the newspaper is close to the religious establishment that controls the Justice Ministry.

The king usually issues amnesties to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival which begins on Wednesday.

If confirmed, the pardon would represent a rare occasion where Saudi rulers have appeared to publicly challenge the country's hardline clerics, who have wide powers in society according to a traditional pact with the Saudi royal family.

Clerics of Wahhabi Islam dominate the justice system which King Abdullah said in October he wanted to reform.

Criticizing the religion-based judiciary is sensitive, but the rape case became a national embarrassment, provoking soul-searching among columnists in the press about the country's international image.

Fawziya al-Oyouni, a women's rights activist, welcomed the report but noted it implied the woman was still in the wrong.

"We need harsher sentences for the guilty parties, and we want to feel safe," she said, citing another rape case in the Eastern Province this month.

(Writing by Andrew Hammond, editing by Tim Pearce)
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Ruling Jolts Even Saudis: 200 Lashes for Rape Victim

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia,. Nov. 15 — A Saudi court on Tuesday more than doubled the number of lashes that a female rape victim was sentenced to last year after her lawyer appealed the original sentence. The decision, which many lawyers found shocking even by Saudi standards of justice, has provoked a rare public debate about the treatment of women here.

The victim’s lawyer, Abdulrahman al-Lahem, a well-known human rights activist, drew the court’s ire because of his strong public criticism of the handling of the case. He has called his client’s conviction unjust and said the sentences of the seven men who raped her were too lenient.

He is also known for his past defense of critics of the monarchy.

The victim’s name has not been released. She was raped about 18 months ago in Qatif, a city in the Eastern Province, and has become known in the Saudi media as “the Qatif girl.” She was 19 years old at the time of the assault.

Her case has been widely debated since the court sentenced her to 90 lashes a year ago for being in the same car as an unrelated man, even after it ruled that she had subsequently been raped. For a woman to be in seclusion with a man who is not her husband or a relative is a crime in Saudi Arabia, whose legal code is based on a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law.

Adding to the charged political nature of the case, the victim is a member of the kingdom’s Shiite Muslim minority.

Mr. Lahem’s license to practice law has been suspended and he is facing a hearing before a Ministry of Justice disciplinary committee on Dec. 5 in Riyadh for appearing regularly on television and talking about the case.

Judges of the Qatif General Court have accused him of trying to tarnish the court’s image by talking to the media.

The young woman’s offense was in meeting a former boyfriend, whom she had asked to return pictures he had of her because she was about to marry another man. The couple was sitting in a car when a group of seven men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers in the case told Arab News, a Saudi newspaper.

The woman and the former boyfriend were originally sentenced to 90 lashes each for being together in private, while the attackers received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison, and 80 to 1,000 lashes each.

Mr. Lahem appealed the attackers’ sentences, saying that they were too lenient and that the treatment of the victim was too harsh. In its new decision issued Tuesday, the court increased the victim’s sentence to 200 lashes and six months in jail. It also increased the sentences of her attackers to prison terms of two to nine years.

The woman remains free for the time being and has not yet been lashed.

Lashing is a common sentence under the Saudi penal code, applied for crimes ranging from homosexuality and drinking alcohol to theft and adultery. Usually, lashes are meted out in increments because offenders could not survive hundreds of lashes at once. The administrator of the punishment is supposed to hold a Koran under his arm so he cannot swing the whip too fiercely; lashes are not supposed to leave permanent scars. The sentence is frequently delivered in public, often at the entrance to a jail.

“I don’t agree with this judgment,” Bassem Alim, a lawyer in Jidda, said of the woman’s sentence. “I think it’s overly severe. She should not be punished for going to the media and explaining her case.”

Mr. Alim, a friend of the victim’s lawyer, said the standard punishment for adultery is 60 to 80 lashes, so the sentence was unusually harsh, even for Saudi Arabia.

“I don’t think she was committing adultery in that car,” Mr. Alim added.

Some liberal commentators said her sentence highlighted the justice system’s failure to treat women fairly.

Abeer Mishkhas, a columnist who writes frequently about women’s rights, wrote in Arab News that the woman seemed to have been singled out for particularly draconian treatment. Ms. Mishkhas noted that a Riyadh court sentenced a Nigerian man to six years in prison and 600 lashes for rape, and an accomplice who filmed the offense was sentenced to 12 years in prison and 1,200 lashes.

“What is the difference in the two cases?” Ms. Mishkhas wrote. “The girl in the Riyadh case was not punished though she had been involved earlier with one of the men. The Qatif girl was sentenced to 90 lashes because the court suspected the ‘intention of doing something bad.’”

Mr. Lahem told Agence France-Presse that the court might be subjecting him to pressure because of his past criticism of the judiciary.

He declined to be interviewed for this article. In the past he has occasionally refused to speak to the news media because he said he had been ordered not to by the government.

Mr. Lahem has had run-ins with Saudi authorities since he represented three Saudis who were jailed in 2003 for calling for a constitutional monarchy, a severe crime in a country where the power of the royal family is absolute. He was also jailed at one point for several months and his passport was removed to prevent him from traveling abroad after he criticized the judicial system on Al Jazeera, the television network.

“I am skeptical of the reasoning used by the court in seeking to punish Al Lahem,” Mr. Alim said. “He’s a good friend of mine and I know it is not in his nature to make fun of or belittle the courts. I hope he is cleared at the hearing.”

The victim is now married, and her husband told local reporters that he planned to appeal the verdict.
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Saudi Says Rape Victim Was Adulteress

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 25, 2007

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Saudi Arabia's Justice Ministry said a girl who it sentenced to jail time and flogging after being gang raped by seven men was an adulteress who invited the attack because at the time she was partially dressed in a parked car with her lover.

The statement from the ministry, carried by the Saudi Press Agency late Saturday, defended the court's decision to sentence the girl to six months in prison and 200 lashes for violating the country's strict sex segregation laws.

It also sought to ease international outrage over the case by discrediting the woman who had told reporters earlier that she was meeting a friend from high school when the attack occurred.

''The Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defended her,'' the statement said. ''The charged girl is a married woman who confessed to having an affair with the man she was caught with.''

Known only as the ''Girl from Qatif,'' the 19-year-old rape victim said she was a newlywed who was meeting a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him when the attack occurred in the eastern city of Qatif. While in a car with him, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where others waited, and then she and her companion were both raped.

The ministry's latest account of the incident alleges that the woman and her lover met in his car for a tryst ''in a dark place where they stayed for a while.''

''Then they were spotted by the other defendants as the woman was in an indecent condition as she had tossed away her clothes, then the assault occurred on her and the man,'' the statement added.

It said the sentence of prison and lashes, handed down last week following an appeal, was legal and followed the ''the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad,'' noting that she had ''confessed to doing what God has forbidden.''

The woman and her husband were ''convinced of the verdict and agreed to it,'' it said.

The girl was initially sentenced to prison and 90 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her. When her lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, appealed the sentence, he was removed from the case, his license was suspended and the penalty was doubled to 200 lashes.

The increase in sentence received heavy coverage in the international media and prompted expressions of astonishment from the U.S. government. Canada called it ''barbaric.''

Under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, women are not allowed in public in the company of men other than their male relatives. Also, women in Saudi Arabia are often sentenced to flogging and even death for adultery and other crimes.

The seven men convicted of gang raping the woman were given prison sentences of two to nine years. The initial sentences for the men ranged from 10 months to five years in prison.

The case has sparked rare domestic debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, which gives judges wide discretion in sentencing criminals, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no lawyers are present.

Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts and judges appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council. Those courts and judges have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.

That means that no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence to death, depending on the judge's discretion.

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Associated Press Writer Omar Sinan contributed to this story.

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October 24, 2007

UN Chief: Violence Against Women Surges

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. secretary-general warned that violence against women has reached ''hideous'' levels in some countries trying to recover from conflict, and the U.N. Security Council demanded an end to impunity for rape and other sexual abuse.

The council expressed deep concern Tuesday that despite its repeated demands for an immediate end to violence against women caught in armed conflicts, ''rape and other forms of sexual abuse, as well as all other forms of violence, ... remain pervasive, and in some situations have become systematic, and have reached appalling levels of atrocity.''

''The council stresses the need to end impunity for such acts as part of a comprehensive approach to seeking peace, justice, truth and national reconciliation,'' it said.

The council statement was read at the end of a day-long open meeting on implementation of a resolution adopted in 2000 that called for the prosecution of crimes against women and increased protection of women and girls during war. It also demanded that women be included in decision-making positions at every level of peacemaking and peacebuilding.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said ''violence against women has reached hideous and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict.'' He did not name any countries.

''Together, all of us need to strengthen our collective and individual response to it,'' Ban said. ''This is essential if we are to reverse the damage done by conflict, and to build more inclusive, accountable and cohesive socieites, underpinned by viable democratic institutions.''

U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno stressed the U.N.'s ''zero tolerance'' for sexual exploitation and abuse by its more than 80,000 peacekeeping troops.

''While rape is used as a weapon of war in situations such as ... Congo and Darfur, addressing this war crime requires going beyond political compromise, power and resource sharing agreements,'' he said. ''Instead, combating rape and other forms of sexual violence calls for concerted, robust and ongoing action on the part of both national actors and also the international community at every level of engagement.''

Assistant Secretary-General Rachel Mayanja, the secretary-general's special adviser on gender issues, urged all governments, parliaments, international organizations and civic groups to join a worldwide campaign on violence against women and girls that Ban will launch later this year.

''Impunity for perpetrators and insufficient response to the needs of survivors are morally reprehensible and unacceptable,'' she said. ''Sexual violence in conflict, particularly rape, should be named for what it is: not a private act or the unfortunate misbehavior of a renegade soldier, but aggression, torture, war crime and genocide.''
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October 7, 2007

Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War

By Jeffrey Gettleman

BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”

The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government.

But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.

United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her.

She is also pregnant.

While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.

“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil.

The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.”

No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening.

“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.”

Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished.

Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago.

Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

“These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said.

Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo.

This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.

But his men may be no better.

Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.

“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.”

She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.

In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area.

The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women.

Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them.

But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.

Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.

Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.

“There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

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