Jane Doe (S), DRC

Laia Abril, On Rape, 2022

Narrator: She is 23, originally from DRC but has been a refugee in Chad for two years due to the conflicts in her village. When she returns − after walking alone for 400 km carrying a two-month-old baby − her family has disappeared. The chief of her new neighbourhood takes her to the hospital because she begins to develop very strange symptoms: incoherent laughter, aggressive behaviour to the baby, she hears voices… When they arrive at our medical centre it is explained to us that at night she has outbreaks in which she grabs the baby as if it were an AK-47 to defend herself with. When we come across advanced pregnancies that are the result of a rape and cannot be terminated, we, as therapists, feel total helplessness, a very common experience here. During conflict, men arrive at the village and rape women in front of their husbands. Or vice versa, they rape the husband in front of the woman, to take away his power. Sometimes women are captured and taken as “wives” and suffer abuse for years. If they come to us immediately, we can administer emergency treatment for STDs and unwanted pregnancies. In critical medical cases they may even be offered a kit containing intimacy and sanitary utilities and even a new dress − so that what they were wearing can be kept as evidence. But many times it can take up to seven years for them to seek help. The trauma works like a cyst of the mind. Sometimes just the sound of a falling pot takes them back to the moment of the attack; and they come to consultation, as if everything happened only yesterday..