NHIALDIU, South Sudan (AP) — Wrapping an arm around her stomach, the young woman hung her head and recounted the day in early November when…
NHIALDIU, South Sudan (AP) — Wrapping an arm around her stomach, the young woman hung her head and recounted the day in early November when she and a friend were bound, dragged into the bush and raped by four men with guns.
“My body hasn’t been the same since,” the 18-year-old said. The men attacked during an hours-long walk home to the South Sudan village of Nhialdiu. “I was crying and screaming but I was so far from the village that no one could hear me,” she told The Associated Press, which doesn’t identify survivors of sexual assault.
Shock and outrage followed when the medical charity Doctors Without Borders announced that 125 women and girls had been raped, whipped and clubbed over 10 days last month in a dramatic spike in sexual violence. “Horrific,” the United Nations secretary-general said. They were attacked as they made the long walk to a food distribution site in Bentiu, in Unity state.
In an exclusive look at the aftermath, the AP joined a U. N. peacekeeping patrol where the attacks occurred as humanitarians, rights groups and South Sudan’s government scrambled to find out more.
Rape has been used widely as a weapon in South Sudan. Even after a peace deal was signed in September to end a five-year civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people, humanitarians have warned of higher rates of sexual assault as growing numbers of desperate people try to reach aid. While some aid groups have quietly questioned whether all 125 people in the Doctors With Borders report were raped, they do not dispute that the problem has become grave.
The 18-year-old was not included in that report, and the real toll of sexual assault is not known.
Joining the U. N. patrol on Friday, the AP traveled the potholed road where the recent assaults took place. Shrouded by trees and elephant grass, some stretches provide cover for perpetrators to lurk.
