Gangs use sexual violence to control communities in Haiti

The island nation of Haiti is in crisis. There are food shortages, a crumbling government, and gangs are expanding their reach. The Miami Herald's Jacqueline Charles joins us now with exclusive reporting. She details how these groups are using sexual violence to inflict fear. Humanitarian organizations report more than 7,400 cases of gender-based violence in Haiti between January and September, and that number is likely an undercount. And a heads up, this story will contain descriptions of sexual violence. Jacqueline Charles, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

JACQUELINE CHARLES: Thanks for having me.

KEITH: I want to start with how you learned about this. Credible information can be hard to get in Haiti right now, and you write, stigma around rape leads to many victims staying quiet. So where did you start for this story?

CHARLES: So, you know, I've been covering Haiti for more than two decades, and while I've been watching this gang crisis, we were seeing these reports of sexual violence. But I actually was speaking with Dr. William Pape, Bill Pape, who is quoted through this series. And he was talking about, you know, 11-year-old girls who were survivors of gang rape, and then they were impregnated, and then they were forced to carry their babies to term because abortion, even in the case of rape, was not allowed. And then he mentioned that when they would give birth, they basically were disconnected from these children - there was no connection - and how we are raising a generation loss.

And so I started off in search of an 11-year-old girl who had been victimized by gangs, who had become pregnant. But what I found was a story that was much more complicated and worse in so many ways, if you can imagine.

KEITH: Is there a particular story that you just can't shake?

CHARLES: You know, the main story opens up with a young girl that, when she was 14 years old, she came from school one day. She's still in her uniform. She and her father were forced to watch her stepmother be gang raped in front of them, and then her father was gunned down. And then she herself was sequestered for five days with five other girls - teenage girls, you know, similar age bracket as she was. And they were tied to chairs. They were not giving any food or any water for five days, and they were repeatedly raped.

And on the morning that she managed to escape, there was a rumor that there was going to be a police raid, and the one gunman that was left to watch them - for whatever reason, he decided to untie them. She fled. She basically passed out in a field. A good Samaritan happened to have found her - thank God - took her to the police, Brigade for Minors, and they got her into one of the few rape shelters that exist and happened to have a bed that day.

And this young lady - she stands out because as horrible as her story, and as gut wrenching it is, she's actually fortunate. You know, she didn't end up pregnant. She didn't end up with an STD, and she managed to get into a shelter where she continues to live today, and she was able to get counseling. A lot of places don't have counselors, and those that do have counselors - their counselors last about two years because the trauma that they themselves are enduring in this situation.

KEITH: This is probably an impossible question. But why? Why is there this problem? Why is this getting worse?

CHARLES: The gangs are using rape as a weapon. It's become weaponized. You will hear gang members say that we don't rape our own, meaning that they don't rape women, girls and sometimes boys and even men in territories that they control. But when they move into another territory, when there's a gang war to take control or they're expanding, this is - we hear these horrible stories.

And then the other why, of course, is why the lack of outrage inside the country? I mean, we hear, you know, on the international front, in terms of the U.N., they've been, you know, raising their voice on this issue and saying that it needs to be focused on, especially as we see the cuts that are coming, whether it's the U.S. or European nations. But inside, you know, Haitians are not talking about this, not recognizing it.

And often, the survivors are not seen as victims, but also complicit because they live in these neighborhoods that are controlled by gangs. How do you escape that in a capital where 1 in 4 individuals now live in a gang-controlled neighborhood, and gangs control up to 90% of your capital? That's 4 million people supposedly in a capital, and gangs control up to 90% of that territory.

KEITH: Do you have any sense of what needs to happen for this situation to improve?

CHARLES: I think the first thing that needs to happen is there needs to be a recognition. We need to start to talk about it, right? It needs to talk about - to be spoken about. And then you have to say, how do we save this generation loss?

The young lady that I spoke to you about in the beginning, you know, who was 14 years old when this happened to her - what amazed me when I spoke to her - I'm crying, I'm in tears - but I said to her, how are you not on the ground? I mean, how are you not broken? And she said to me, you know, I had suicidal thoughts. I had lost the most important person in my life, my father. I thought that my life was over. But with the counseling that I received, they kept telling me that, you know, it's not over, that there is hope, that I can rebuild, and I can go on.

And that was just so inspiring for me. And it also said to me the value of the counseling, of getting that kind of help to her. But so many of the women and girls - and we spoke to more than a dozen. You know, we actually spoke to dozens of people. Some of them don't even make it into the story. They don't have that access. You know, they don't even know where to begin to get that access, and it's not available to them because of either where they are or the fact that they're living on the streets.

KEITH: Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald, thank you so much for bringing your reporting to our show.

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