Abstract
This article discusses psychosocial challenges faced by women survivors of rape in their families and communities based on the interpretation of rape as a sexual taboo and held beliefs that automatic transgression of taboo, through unwanted sexual contact, defiles and endangers survivors and those who associate with them. This article raises awareness on these challenges and provides contextualized useful knowledge for professionals in helping the relationship with survivors and for gender relations policy makers. Built on results from a doctoral qualitative, grounded theory-based research, the article presents survivors’ stories from women who suffered rape and therapists who provided multidisciplinary services to them. Researchers have found that rape is widely believed to be a sexual taboo in Mwenga and other rural areas from the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The results suggest that efforts to support healing and social integration of survivors can be well supported by taking into consideration the contextual belief system around sexual defilement as this plays a significant role in post rape relations for survivors in their families and communities.
Highlights
For over two decades, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been impacted by recurrent wars involving the national army against foreign armies as well as local and foreign militia (UN Security Committee 2012)
As for Wabiwa bis, whose story is reported on the previous page, she underwent a public ritual for her reintegration in her community; her husband was already assassinated by her kidnappers. She spent six months in the jungle as a sex slave to the interahamwe militia, yet her escape and return to her community was met with fear of who she had become as a rape survivor; a defiled woman and mother
Interpretation of rape as a sexual taboo is a difficult reality for hundreds of thousands of women and girls who have suffered rape for the past two decades in the DRC
Summary
Mwenga is a rural territory in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the rule of taboo still dominates given the absence of adequate modern legal system infrastructure. Like in other rural territories, rape was used as an attack against cultural norms on which local communities are founded as an attempt to weaken these communities suspected of sympathizing with armed groups. Human Rights Watch, in 2000, rebel group “Le Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD), supported by Rwandan and Ugandan troops, raped, tortured and buried alive several women in Mwenga and other rural territories (Human Rights Watch 2000)
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