Congo’s hidden victims: Child survivors recount gang rape, sexual slavery by M23 forces

Christabelle, a 10-year-old Congolese girl, said she was raped alongside her mother by M23 insurgents in February. The child passed out and awoke in excruciating pain.

17-year-old Christelle said she was gang raped by at least seven M23 soldiers during the battle for Goma in January. She needed surgery to recover, but the pain was just beginning. Neighbors called her a “compromised woman” whom no one would marry. Her parents sent her away to neighboring Burundi. “I don’t have family. I can’t go to school. I can’t work. They destroyed my life,” she said of her rapists.

Celine, age 9, said 10 M23 soldiers burst into her home in the middle of the night. “They stabbed my mom to death in front of me,” she said, shaking violently at the memory. Celine said the soldiers tried to rape her, but got frustrated because she was so tiny, so they beat her instead. She and her uncle fled to Burundi. “I couldn’t even bury my mom,” she said.

M23 and other armed combatants are using sexual violence as a weapon of war in Congo. Reuters spoke with 46 rape victims, nearly half of them children. One was so badly injured that two surgeries have only begun to repair the damage. It’s a tactic of terror meant to destroy families and communities, a veteran doctor who works with rape survivors told Reuters