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Rain and Rape for Haiti Earthquake Survivors

By Carmen Dixon on Jun 24th 2010 9:04AM
Filed under: News

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Rain and Rape for Haiti Earthquake Survivors

Perhaps from the perspective of an expert in post-disaster recovery patterns, the problems facing Haiti earthquake survivors right now are to be expected. But, to me, the continued suffering of Haitians who survived January's 7.0 earthquake feels relentless.

For one, Mother Nature continues to flex her muscles in the region: The rain is causing small floods in an area now home to many earthquake survivors. The Associated Press reports that "Haitian civil protection officials say rains have caused small floods in the northwestern city of Gonaives. Much of the country is under an 'orange alert' for more serious floods caused by a rain-producing Caribbean system. The city is surrounded by denuded mountains and has twice been inundated during tropical storms since 2004, with thousands of lives lost."And then there are the lower impulses of human nature that are also increasing the suffering of the most vulnerable survivors. The New York Times brings this in to focus with the story of a 22-year-old woman, Rose, who was abducted while sitting in a police car and repeatedly raped by several men and held hostage until a ransom was paid by her poor family.

"Perhaps the worst part of the whole ordeal, she said, was the place where her kidnappers had chosen to imprison her. That they abducted her was terrifying. That they raped her, repeatedly, was too horrendous to absorb just yet. But stashing her in the ruins of a home? Making her crawl on her stomach beneath a collapsed slab into a destroyed house where they hid her in a pocket of rubble? That was torture, she said. "Since I had not slept under any roof since the earthquake, I was so scared I could not breathe," said the woman, who requested that her full name be withheld. Rose's kidnappers told her brother-in-law, who delivered the ransom of about $2,000, that they would kill her if she talked. She had no intention of doing so.

Hard to imagine justice for Rose or others like her, when policemen don't even have the tools to fight off carjackers.

"Existing numbers, from the police or women's groups, indicate that violence against women has escalated in the months after the earthquake. Kidnappings are rare, but they, too, have increased, and "the threat is constant," said Antoine Lerbours, a spokesman for the Haitian National Police.

Malya Villard, director of Kofaviv, a grassroots organization that supports rape victims, said that the presence of thousands of prisoners who escaped during the earthquake aggravated an environment where insecurity and despair feed on each other. "It's an ideal climate for rape," she said."

Unfortunately, Haiti does not seem like an ideal climate for recovery right now.

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