Seated on a woven straw mat in a refugee camp in eastern Chad, Dr. Sondra Crosby of the Boston Medical Center listened with mounting distress as the women of Darfur came forward, one by one over 12 days, to tell her their stories of rape, beatings, hunger, and humiliation.
She and three other Boston-area medical specialists interviewed 88 women in November in eastern Chad. This morning they released the results in a report that offers unprecedented and disturbing details on the long-term effects of the assaults - as well as fresh evidence of the continuing violence against the women of Darfur, years after they fled the battlefield.
The 88 women interviewed reported suffering 32 rapes. Of those, 17 occurred in Darfur and 15 in Chad. Seven women reported being the victim of gang rape in Darfur, and three women reported being raped more than once. For two of them, rape in Darfur was followed by rape in Chad.
The story of one woman, in particular, transfixed Crosby, who lives in Dedham with her five adopted children and has made it her calling to investigate cases of torture and abuse.
"The woman told me . . . she was beaten on her arms so badly that she couldn't use them, and she was raped by four to six men," Crosby recalled. "She witnessed the same thing happen to others who were hiding with her. She was eight months pregnant at the time. She described giving birth to a dead baby, and how painful it was. After the rape her husband divorced her."
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