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Congo's Rape Epidemic Worsens During U.S.-Backed Military Operation
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"I'd say 99 percent are by soldiers," she said. "And every week, it continues I hear them say, 'You think we'll stay here without women?! We need women!'"
The attacks in Lugungu began last month.
As women here do most mornings, Madelena Ngalya left the village around 9 a.m. one recent day and walked alone along a path through the jungle to her farm. The 56-year-old widow had been planting there for about an hour when she saw a soldier at the edge of the field. He walked toward her.
"I started trembling when I saw him," she said. "I felt unable to cry, even to scream. I said, 'My son, how are you?'"
The soldier asked whether she was by herself.
"I said, 'I'm alone here,' she said. "He said, 'If you cry, we have many soldiers in the jungle, and when others hear you cry, they will come to you, too.' My body was like dead. Then he did what he wanted to do."
On the same day Ngalya was raped, in the same area, around the same hour, soldiers raped four more women -- the youngest 18 and pregnant, and one older than 70. Three other women, including Bitondo, narrowly escaped the assault of another soldier while they were out cutting firewood.
"He started saying, 'We are suffering. We left our wives very far, we are going to die, and you are here like this,'" Bitondo said. "We started running."
The soldier chased after her friend, 20-year-old Rosa Musombwa, who took off so fast she left her flip-flops behind. When the soldier caught her skirt, she twisted out of it and kept on running through the jungle. When he caught her again by her underwear, she ripped them off and kept running, finally jumping into a sandy river. The soldier jumped in after her, but finally gave up.
Not one soldier from the 52nd brigade, which is in charge of the area, has been arrested, military officials said.
After the spate of attacks, women imposed the curfew, and they now go to their farms only in groups of five or six and accompanied by men.
"If [soldiers] meet you, they will rape you," Ngalya said. "They don't fear anything."
