Six Haitian women’s struggles to recover from rape by gangs

29 November 2024

Nadine: “I don’t know if I will live much longer”

Nadine (her name, like all the women interviewed in this series, has been changed for security reasons), a 19-year-old Haitian woman from the gang-controlled area of Cité Soleil in Port-au-Prince, often works with children at her church. A natural leader – articulate and skilled at public speaking – she teaches the children the catechism and organises activities for them in her community.  And she doesn't intend to allow the brutal kidnapping and assault she suffered last year stop her. 

She was living with her aunt when, on 1 October 2023, she and her brother took a bus to visit their mother in Source Matelas in the Cabaret commune at the northern edge of the capital. 

They were unaware of fierce clashes that day between two gangs along the route to Cabaret that would make the trip far riskier than normal.

To navigate toll stations on the route, bus drivers negotiate with the gangs, who let them go through for a fee. But when a new gang comes into an area, all deals are off and the situation can quickly degenerate. This was the case that day: When the bus stopped, it was effectively hijacked and the passengers were taken by the bandits. 

Source Matelas has been under siege by armed groups for months. Dozens of people were killed in a massacre last April, including babies. The fighting has displaced thousands. 

As violence continued in the area, Nadine, her brother, and the other bus passengers were held captive for three days. She was continuously raped during those 72 hours by several members of the gang that held them hostage. She was also violently beaten and now has permanent damage to her right ear. 

Her brother was also brutally abused and shot in the foot. The gang members didn't ask for ransom. In Haiti, kidnappings and rape are now routinely used by armed groups to terrorise the population and assert their power. Nadine and her brother were fortunate enough to survive and be released. Not all the occupants of the bus had the same luck; several were killed. 

Once free, they called their aunt on the way home. In tears, she advised her nephew not to return to Cité Soleil, because when a young man is shot there he is immediately identified as a gang member and can face retaliation, including being killed. Another family member met him outside the commune to take him to the hospital for treatment. 

Nadine returned home and told her aunt everything she had been through. They decided to keep the story a secret. They needed to protect Nadine’s reputation, because in Haitian society raped women are doubly victimised by the guilt and shame imposed on them after the assault.

Nadine also felt she needed to maintain her image as a respectable girl who teaches the catechism and is entrusted with children for activities in her church. She bore her pain in silence. She did not return to school and isolated herself at home.

When, a month later, she became increasingly ill, a close family friend advised taking her to the Pran Men’m clinic that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) used to run in Delmas before suspending its operations in the country. There, she was told she had a severe infection, had contracted HIV, and was several weeks pregnant. 

She was immediately cared for by a whole team. She underwent a series of tests, received a large quantity of medication, and clear instructions to follow a rigorous treatment regimen. She also saw a psychologist, with whom she spoke for several hours. After being cared for by MSF, Nadine and her aunt “took the way of the women”, as a popular Haitian expression puts it: She had an abortion. 

Once back home in Cité Soleil, she followed the advice of one of the MSF doctors to contact Nègès Mawon for help. She stepped through the doors of the organisation for the first time in early November 2023. That day, Sabatini Arcelin was on duty to receive survivors of violence. She welcomed Nadine and began to file her case for the organisation's records. When survivors want to report the rape at a police station, a lawyer is provided for them to do so. But most are too scared to do it and do not trust the country's broken justice system.

The spark between both women was immediate: Sabatini became her marraine. Nadine told her she didn’t feel able to talk about what had happened to her, but that she could write. She settled into a corner of the office, in tears, and filled three entire blank pages, describing the horrors she had experienced and the abyss in which she had found herself since. 

When asked what she expected from Nègès Mawon, her response came without hesitation. “I want to go back to school,” she said. The organisation then began the process of finding funds to pay for her school year and all the materials she needed. She faithfully attended her sessions with her therapist, remained in constant contact with her marraine, and didn’t miss a single appointment at the clinic for her HIV treatment. Slowly but steadily she regained her strength, and her physical and mental health improved.

In January 2024, Nadine was able to return to school. She filmed a short video that she sent to Sabatini: “I’m on my way to school. It’s my first day of class, and I’m very happy,” she says. Small but happy sobs can be heard as she proudly records herself in her new uniform. She also sent dozens of photos of her new classroom and even posted a video on her TikTok account. 

In the following months, Nadine participated in all of Nègès Mawon´s activities: training sessions, support groups, painting, music, and writing workshops. She also resumed her work at her church and, last July, despite the delays in her schooling, she was admitted to senior class. 

However, Haiti’s spiralling insecurity has since got in the way of her life projects again. 

Since the beginning of the new school year, in October, Nadina hasn’t been able to attend classes because the gang violence in Cité Soleil shuttered her school. Her new uniform, her new books, and the money for her tuition await the political decision-makers and the gangs to allow her to fulfill her dream of finishing her secondary education and going to university.

“I don’t know if I will live much longer because many of the young people like me whom I knew in the area are dead today,” she said. “But in the future, I want to do the same work as my godmother. Despite what happened to me, I want to help other women, I want to help people.”

19 November 2024

Guerda: “Every time I see other girls in uniform on their way to school, it's like I'm dead”

It’s 3pm on 6 November and there is a bit of panic at Maison Claire-Heureuse – a safe house for survivors of sexual violence and women and children displaced by armed gangs run by Haitian feminist organisation Nègès Mawon. When she went to the bathroom, Guerda, a 19-year-old pregnant girl from Port-au-Prince, noticed there was blood in her urine. 

Scared, she immediately informed the house manager and the nurse, who knew it was the first sign that she was in labour. They helped her get what she might need and put everything in motion to get her medical assistance before night fell. Darkness comes very early in Haiti at this time of year, and if walking in the streets is dangerous for everyone at any time of the day, it is even riskier for women and after twilight. 

The nurse and Guerda’s mother, 50-year-old Adrienne, who lives with her daughter at Maison Claire-Heureuse, accompanied her. They took a taxi to a hospital that offers medical assistance to the safe house’s residents. Due to the security crisis in Haiti, dozens of hospitals and health centres were forced to close in Port-au-Prince, while others have even been the target of attacks. This makes access to care extremely difficult. 

Guerda became pregnant after a rape last February. She is one more of the many Haitian women who have survived sexual violence by gangs, and who struggle to find assistance in a country devastated by increasing political instability, rising poverty and hunger, and spiralling violence. 

Gangs have long existed in Haiti, but progressively tightened their grip on large swathes of the country in the past few years. According to UN reports, sexual violence has now reached unprecedented levels. 

Guerda was born and raised in Fond-Tamara but later moved – with her older sister and widowed mother – to Carrefour-Feuilles, one of the areas most affected by the violence. They rented a piece of land, where they set up a small house with temporary materials to find shelter until Adrienne could afford to build a permanent home.

On 13 August 2023, however, they had to flee Carrefour-Feuilles along with thousands of other people from the area displaced by gang attacks that month.

Luckily, Guerda and her sister were at school during the attack, but Adrienne was raped by the bandits, who took over her neighbourhood.  

Before the assault, Adrienne would describe herself as a ti machann (Haitian Kreyol for merchant): She resold anything that could bring her a small profit, often of no more than 500 Haitian gourdes (about $4) a day. She used to sell laundry buckets in the centre of town.

When the situation made it impossible to reach the public markets in the lower part of town, and as the dire economic situation forced Haitians to only buy basic products, mostly food, she changed the buckets for soap, salmon, and oil, which she was able to sell quite easily as she wandered through the various neighbourhoods of Carrefour-Feuilles. She also did – and still does – laundry for a few customers. A day’s washing can earn her up to 1,000 gourdes (about $8), and if the person “has a good heart”, it can go up to 1,500 gourdes ($11).

Adrienne has never spared herself any sacrifice or work to educate and feed her children. When there wasn't enough for the three of them, she saved her share of food to reheat it the following day for her daughters.

That is until 13 August 2023, when she lost everything. She didn't have time to take the meagre savings she had hidden in a corner of the house, and had to leave the little she had behind. Above all, as gang members tore at her tired body, she lost a part of herself and her dignity.

“Se yon granmoun mwen ye, yo pat oblije fè m sa” (“I am an elder woman, they did not have to do this to me”), she said. 

After her rape, it took Adrienne four months to go to the hospital. She was ashamed and didn't want people to know what she'd been through. She preferred to put her health on the back-burner rather than suffer the scrutiny and scorn of society.

By then, she had settled in a displaced camp with her daughters. Committed to giving her children a proper future, she sent the eldest to stay with relatives in the southern town of Les Cayes, and Guerda to her grandmother’s home in the Fond-Tamara neighbourhood so she could continue going to school. She had passed her exams and was due to return to classes in October, but going back to her school in Carrefour-Feuilles was not an option.

Adrienne remained in the camp for more than a year, gathering as she could the money needed for Guerda's school fees and for her eldest to live down south.

Guerda was in 11th grade, when, on the afternoon of 17 February 2024, she went to a party in Fond-Tamara. She left at 7pm to return home. It's a short walk to the nearest mototaxi station, but it was enough for two men to spot her and follow her. When she reached the motorcycle driver, they drew their weapons and ordered him to flee. 

They kept the motorbike – and they kept Guerda. After straddling the bike, they made Guerda sit in between them and drove to a nearby neighbourhood called Mont Delouis. There, in an abandoned house, they raped and beat her for several hours before leaving her alone in the middle of the night. 

Guerda became pregnant that night, but only found out after several weeks, desperately hoping she would get her period. She did not go to the hospital after the assault, and therefore received no treatment.

In the following months, she tried to provoke a miscarriage in any possible way she could think of, but to no avail. She was in pain, but she never told anyone what had happened to her. She made herself ill by drinking all sorts of potions and by taking multiple pills. She spent her nights crying because nothing worked. She barely found the energy to go to school; her grades plummeted. 

In her fourth month of pregnancy, she finally decided to go to a hospital to ask for help having an abortion, although it is illegal in Haiti and punishable with prison sentences – both for the pregnant woman and the person who performs it. Health workers told her she was anaemic, that her pregnancy was too far advanced, and that they didn't do abortions anyway. 

At that point, Guerda felt she had no other choice than to tell her mother. She left Fond-Tamara, suspended her schooling, and returned to live in the camp with her. Devastated by the fact that her daughter had experienced the same violence she had survived only months before, Adrienne eventually reached out to Nègès Mawon for help. By that time, Guerda was already eight months pregnant.

“If Guerda had told me earlier, I would have taken her somewhere to have a lavaj (a Kreyol term used to refer to a clandestine medical abortion) because my daughter is too young and doesn't deserve what happened to her,” she said. “She is brilliant, has never repeated a grade or failed an exam. I gave my blood for her to get an education and can't accept what she’s been going through.” 

Two weeks later, at the end of October, Nègès Mawon accommodated them both at Maison Claire-Heureuse, where Guerda is surrounded by a staff who care for her, and by other women survivors of sexual violence who go out of their way to support her. She has the assistance of a psychologist, a nurse, and a marraine. Part of her recovery consists of participating in karaoke sessions, playing sports, meditating, and taking art and sewing classes. 

But making peace with her traumatic experience is a continuous struggle for Guerda. 

“I know the child isn't responsible, but I don't know how I'm going to look at him when he is born,” she told the house manager only weeks before the delivery. “I'd like to be able to give him away and go back to my normal life.” 

She said she wanted to go back to school, learn a profession. 

“I've done nothing to deserve this,” she said. “Everyone looks at me sideways and humiliates me. I don't want to take my own life, but every time I see other girls in uniform on their way to school it's like I'm dead.”

After Guerda had her baby in November 2024, one of her mother’s laundry customers donated some products and clothes for the child. 

But Adrienne said she can't afford to take care of a baby, and that she doesn't know if they will ever be able to return home. The uncertainty about the future torments her.

“Today, we're at the Maison Claire-Heureuse, but we won't be able to stay there indefinitely,” she said. “I have nothing left, and my daughter's future is destroyed. We need help.” 

5 November 2024

Gabrielle: “I have the courage to move forward”

Gabrielle arrived with a delighted smile at the Hôtel Villa Thérèse in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Pétion-Ville in May 2024 to join a painting and co-creation workshop organised by Nègès Mawon for the women the organisation supports. 

This was her first time meeting other survivors of GBV and participating in this type of activity. Her marraine’s presence at the room's entrance calmed the anxiety she had felt since boarding the bus from the refugee camp where she lives in Centre-Ville – the capital´s downtown.

Born in 1975, Gabrielle grew up in Carrefour-Feuilles – now one of the areas most affected by violence – and took courses in secretarial work, computing, sewing, cooking, and pastry-making. She uses these skills to bouske lavi a (hustle for life) and support her six-year-old daughter.

Haiti’s security crisis has displaced more than 700, 000 people. Gabrielle is among them. In September of last year, a gang attacked her neighbourhood in broad daylight. She was outside of the neighbourhood at the time and watched in horror as images of murder and looting appeared on her phone. She did not return home, seeking shelter instead with a friend.

In December last year, she risked returning to her home to retrieve essential items, including her cooking and sewing equipment, her daughter’s clothes, and medication for her bedridden partner, who suffers from a foot tumour and diabetes. The neighbourhood, once lively with children, street vendors, and music, was now a hauntingly silent scene of looted homes and deserted streets. A police tank patrolling nearby gave her some reassurance, but she remained on edge.

As she stood at her front door, a group of armed men appeared, shoving her inside. They were gang members evading the police nearby. She was held for five hours, subjected to brutal beatings, rape, and threats, while the gang members vandalized her home. All the while, police officers patrolled mere metres away. 

When they left, the gang members stole everything, including her car. She slept in the house that night. She was bleeding and half-conscious. She was in too much pain and too afraid of the dark to go anywhere. Early the next morning, she cleaned herself up as best she could and made her way to the Hôpital Général, Haiti's largest public hospital. 

She arrived before 7am and was the second person to pass through the hospital gates when they opened. But she had to wait to see a doctor until 2pm. Stigma and discrimination are among the many burdens survivors of sexual violence carry in Haiti. Gabrielle’s injuries and trauma were not considered urgent enough to necessitate immediate attention. 

She fell asleep on a bench in the hospital maternity ward. When she woke up, people were pointing at her and whispering, “Se li menm, se fi yo fè kadejak sou li a” – It’s her, it’s the girl who was raped. 

A nurse finally showed her empathy and took control of her treatment. Gabrielle underwent a series of tests before being given antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to prevent a possible HIV infection and prescriptions for a long list of medications to buy. There was no rape kit, no psychological assistance. no medical certificate, and no referral to a women's organisation for further support. 

Haiti has an official national plan to fight violence against women and girls that sets out how public hospitals are supposed to care for rape victims, and the state is obliged to make resources available. But all of this was ignored. 

Gabrielle told no one about her ordeal. She returned to her friend’s small home, concealing her pain. Days later, her partner was hospitalised. On 30 December, Gabrielle reached out to Lunie Joseph, a famous Haitian journalist, asking for help to see a psychologist. After posting a public appeal on social media, Lunie referred her to Nègès Mawon. 

At the end of December, when she connected with the organisation, she was met by the warm voice of one of the marraines, Stéphanie Boucher, on the phone. Gabrielle immediately broke down in tears. This marked the beginning of daily support messages from Stéphanie, who checked in regularly, while Lunie also called her frequently. 

These conversations, mostly while she cared for her partner, were a lifeline for her in a country where institutions don’t work and sexually assaulted women face insurmountable hurdles before they can start recovering physically and mentally. When her friend could no longer house her, Stéphanie found her a donated tent. Gabrielle set it up in the yard of a friend’s empty house. The tent provided minimal shelter, but it was safer than the streets.

In January, after her partner was discharged from the hospital, Gabrielle was able to begin regular sessions with the organisation's psychologist, but a month later she decided to stop all contact with Nègès Mawon and moved into a displaced persons camp at a school.

She hoped this decision would help her forget and move on. However, she continued to relive her traumatic experiences. The challenges of adjusting to life in a displaced persons camp only made things more difficult. 

In May 2024, Gabrielle attempted suicide. She was taken to the hospital unconscious, but survived. Upon returning home, she reconnected with her marraine and resumed therapy sessions. The day she joined the painting workshop at the Hôtel Villa Thérèse, she danced, drew, talked, laughed, and cried, sharing the experience with other women who, like her, had survived unimaginable violence and trauma.

Gabrielle and her daughter still live in a displaced persons camp with several thousand others, lacking privacy and true security. She says that her daughter, who used to be very jovial, is now a sullen, withdrawn child who doesn't understand why she lives in a school.

“School is for learning, Mom, not for sleeping,” she often says. 

She wants to go “home” to her toys and the little car she used to drive around the playground. 

Despite the ongoing difficulties, today, Gabrielle says she feels alive again. 

“I feel like a human being again… I can talk about what happened without breaking down”, she said. “When you've been raped, beaten, humiliated, and have lost everything, it's hard to have hope. I understand that I'll live my whole life with this wound, but I have the courage to move forward.”