Women in Haiti’s squalid refugee camps face rampant rape

[Bacchus39]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_spoint/20110106/ts_yblog_spoint/women-in-haitis-squalid-refugee-camps-face-rampant-rape


One year after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, women and girls staying in the country's refugee camps live without adequate food, water, shelter and medical care. And when the darkness falls, the rapists come.

According to a report from Amnesty International, precarious living conditions and a lack of security in and around the camps have left thousands of women and girls as young as two vulnerable to sexual predators. Many of these women lost their family and community connections in the quake along with all of their worldly possessions.

One widow named Guerline was forced to watch her 13-year-old daughter being gang raped by four men. "They told me that if I talked about it, they would kill me," she told researchers. "They said that if I went to the police, they would shoot me dead." That same night, Guerline was raped as well.

The Commission of Women Victims for Victims, a women's group run by and for rape survivors from the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince, registered 230 cases of sexual assault in 15 camps during the five months after the Jan. 12 quake. There are over 500 camps in the Haitian capital.