The militia of young men raided a village and took away a woman after peeling off the child that was strapped on her back. They then frog-marched her to a nearby bush where, in front of her husband and older children, they raped and then killed her.
This is one of the tales from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where war is an enduring fact of life.
Dr. Denis Mukwege, the director and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in eastern Congo, has heard of, and sometimes witnessed, such heartrending scenes.
"I don't want to see it again, I have had enough of it," Mukwege said during a recent visit to Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore, one of his hospital's partners. Mukwege was in the United States to testify in Congress and to call attention to the rape, torture and mutilation of Congolese women.
When Mukwege opens the doors at Panzi Hospital, he knows that at the end of the day, 10 women lucky enough to be alive will have been counseled and had surgery for their injuries. Many others, however, never make the trip to the doctor.
"We operate on an average 10 women [a day] who have been raped ... some of them too traumatized to speak," said Mukwege, 53, a French-educated gynecologist whose clinic receives support from Catholic Relief Services, UNICEF and the European Union.
Mukwege shrugs off militia threats about being branded a traitor for treating the women but fears that his patients sometimes bear the brunt for seeking treatment.
"The militia are using rape as a weapon of war to humiliate, demoralize, destroy, kill and terrorize the society," said Mukwege, who has been featured on CBS' 60 Minutes. He is also in filmmaker Lisa Jackson's documentary, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, airing this month and next on HBO.
"The world has been silent about the war in Congo; it has to do something about it now," said the Rev. Francois-Xavier Maroy, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Bukavu, who accompanied Mukwege to America.
The two appeared before a Senate subcommittee that examined the use of rape as a weapon of war and explored what the United States and the world community might be able to do to prevent or prosecute the crime.
"Mass rape in war is frequently not the random act of individual soldiers, but a determined strategy to destroy populations," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who chaired the hearing. "Perpetrators turn to mass rape because it is cheaper than using bullets."
