Excerpts from New York Times:

CONGO STRUGGLES TO CHANGE NATIONAL EPIDEMIC OF RAPE

BUKAVU, Congo
Honorata Kizende looked out at the audience and began with a simple, declarative sentence.

“There was no dinner”, she said “It was me who was dinner”.

She then described how she was raped by a group of five men.

The audience, which had been called together by local and international aid groups and included everyone from high-ranking politicians to street kids with no shoes, stared at her in disbelief.

Congo is finally facing its horrific rape problem, whicht UN officials have called the worst sexual violence in the world.

Tens of thousands of women, possibly hundreds of thousands, have been raped in the past few years here, and many of these rapes have been marked by a level of brutality that is shocking even by the twisted standards of a palace haunged by warlords and drug-crazed child soldiers.

After years of denial and shame, the silence is being broken. Becuse of setpped-up efforts in the past nine months by international organizations and  the Congolese government, rapists are no longer able to count on a culture of impuity.

European aid agencies are spending tens of millions of dollars building new courhoues and prisons across eastern Congo, in npart to pucish rapists. Mobile courst are holding rape trials in viallages deep in the forest that have no seen a black-robed magistrate since the Belgians ruled the country decades ago.

In Bunia, a town farther north, RAPE PROSECUTIONS ARE UP 600%.

This is happening in a society where women tend to be beaten down anyway. Congolese women do most of the work–at home, in the fields and in the market..and yet they are often powerless. Many women who are raped are told to keep quiet. Oftien it is a shame for the entire family, and many rape victims have been kicked out of their villages and turned into beggars.

GRASS-ROOTS GROUPS ARE TRYING TO CHANGE THIS CULTURE, AND THEY HAVE started by encouraging women who have been raped to speak out in open forums, liek a courtroom full of spectators, just with no accused.

AT THE EVENT IN BUKAVU IN MID-SEPTEMBER, KIZENDS DREW TEARS –AND CHEERS. It seems that the taboo against talking about rape is beginning to lift.

Dozens of activists are fanning out to villages on foot and by bicycle to deliver a simple but often novel message: Rape is wrong. MEN’S GROUPS ARE EVEN BEIING FORMED.

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I am absolutely awed by this. This is amazing. The world is taking notice and action about one of the worlds oldest and worst crimes and it is one against women. AND they are are having some sort of grass-roots success that I wish I knew more about.

Amazing that they are actually changing the culture so swiftly and even to the point of getting men together to attack this issue, AND getting the women to speak out.

I don’t know who is the head honcho here that designed this grass-roots intervention. But, I do not believe in all of my experience, many as a social worker, that I have EVER heard of ANYTHING to compare with the swiftness and the success of this endeavor.

The world takes on rape. And, while it is about time, it is amazing how aggressive the attack on it is. I am almost moved to tears to see that the most down-trodden WOMEN in the world are being aggressivley defended from the historically horrific and ongoing terrorism of women everywhere.

WOW….someone hand me a kleenex. This world has more hope than I realized.