Sexual violence in Haiti

The natives of the island initially approached Columbus and his soldiers with friendliness and generosity.[21]

Sexual violence on the part of Christopher Columbus's soldiers began almost immediately upon their landing on the island. When he established a fortress and left for Spain in 1493, Spanish soldiers he left behind sexually abused the native Taino women and girls.[22][23] In some cases they held native women and girls as sex slaves.[24] Spanish missionary Bartolomé de las Casas spoke out against the brutality of the Spaniards in a campaign against the enslavement of the Tainos.[25] He quoted one Taino cacique (tribal chief) who said of the Spaniards, "They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters."[25] In a 1500 letter Columbus wrote of the slave trade in Hispaniola, "…there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."[26]

Among the things the Spanish sailors brought back to the old world was yaws, a bacterial disease that the Taino women carried and that was transmitted to the soldiers while raping the women.[27] Syphilis in Europe may also have originated in the new world, and a number of Columbus' sailors brought that disease back from the New World as well.[28]

Some women who became pregnant from rape by settlers took medicinal herbs to cause abortion.[29]

In the 18th century, Haiti was a profitable French colony named Saint-Domingue; its economy was based on plantations that grew sugar for export to Europe and slaves comprised a majority of the population. It was not legal for slaveholders to rape their slaves, but the laws against it were not enforced.[30] Known as the most cruel in the world even for their time, Haitian slavers routinely tortured slaves, mutilating, burning, whipping, and raping them.[31] Like other forms of torture, rape of slaves was commonplace.[32] Sexual torture was also commonplace, including putting gunpowder in the anus and lighting it, and castration and other genital mutilation.[32] Abortion and infanticide became means of resistance for slave women who bore children by whites.[33]

Sex between white male slaveholders and black female slaves was abundant and long-lasting in Haiti in the French colonial period, and always carried with it the violence and coerciveness of the institution of slavery.[33] At the time it was common for white slaveholders to father children with their slaves; typically these men would deny their paternity of these children but they would often free them from slavery and give them land.[34] These mixed-race people were part of a class of Haitians who were referred to as Gens de couleur or "free people of color" who were legally given more privileges than blacks but fewer than whites.[35] Free people of color were not legally entitled to defend their women against rape by whites.[36] By the end of the 1700s there were as many mixed race people who resulted from unions between slaveholders and slaves as there were whites.[37]

In 1804, the revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines led a campaign of massacres against the white people. In parallel to the killings, plundering and rape also occurred.[38] Women and children were generally killed last. White women were "often raped or pushed into forced marriages under threat of death."[38]

After the Haitian revolution former slaveholders circulated pamphlets decrying crimes including rape against whites by Haitians in an attempt to pressure their government to re-initiate military hostilities with Haiti.[39] Such propaganda made a large impact in the US, where imagery like "white women being repeatedly raped on the corpses of their husbands and fathers" terrified slaveholders, who began to fear similar uprisings among their slaves.[40]

Harlem Renaissance author Arna Bontemps wrote novels about the Haitian revolution depicting sexual violence as a means of expressing white dominance over slaves. In his 1939 novel Drums at Dusk, about the Haitian revolution, both black and white characters rape and are raped as a means of asserting the manhood and power of the rapist and denying it to the victim.[41]

From 1915 to 1934, the United States occupied Haiti, and rape and murder of Haitian civilians by US soldiers was commonplace.[42] Both officers and enlisted men participated in the sexual violence, raping adult women and young girls, and sometimes holding women as sex slaves.[43] The marines, who administered a group of Haitian gendarmes acting as police, were accused of widespread rapes of women and girls and of trying to use the gendarmes to find them women to use as concubines.[44] Evidence exists that some military higher-ups knew of the sexual violence but did little to punish it, condoning it by denying it, questioning the virtue of Haitian women, and suggesting that raped women had actually consented.[43] A victim blaming mentality existed among the occupiers, who thought of Haitian women as being "of easy virtue"—a mentality which served to justify and even deny the existence of sexual violence.[44]

Resentment grew on the part of Haitians and led to conflict with the occupiers.[43] African-Americans also raised outcry about the marines' sexual violence; one reverend said, "in one night alone in … Port-au-Prince nine little girls from 8 to 12 years old died from the raping of American soldiers."[43] In his 1920 campaign for presidency, Warren G. Harding criticized incumbent Woodrow Wilson, referring to the occupation as the "Rape of Haiti"; however after he won the election he continued the occupation in his own presidency.[45]

President François "Papa Doc" Duvalier used rape as a weapon against his political opposition.

François "Papa Doc" Duvalier was the President of Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. Overseeing a reign of state terrorism, Duvalier would kill large numbers of political enemies, imprison them arbitrarily, and use gang rape as a means of control.[46] Although both men and women were targeted for violence, women in particular were targeted for rape.[47] In some cases Duvalier himself supervised gang rapes and gave orders to the soldiers performing them, in others he had surrogates perform them in his absence.[48] Duvalier employed an organization of ex-soldiers, criminals, and other loyalists to his regime called Tontons Macoutes.[49] The term is Kreyòl for "Uncle Knapsack", a reference to the bogeyman of Haitian legend who would catch naughty children and kidnap them in his knapsack.[49][50][51] Duvalier used the reference to voodoo, as well as violence such as rape and murder by the Tontons Macoutes, to instill fear and repress opposition.[50][52][53] The Tontons Macoutes remained active even after the presidency of Papa Doc Duvalier's son Baby Doc ended in 1986.[53]

Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier became President of Haiti at age 19 upon his father's death in 1971.[54] According to human rights groups Duvalier used widespread violence, including rape, as a means of suppressing opposition to his regime.[55] Duvalier's presidency lasted until a popular uprising overthrew him in 1986. After the uprising he spent 25 years in France, and when he returned to Haiti he was arrested on charges of human rights abuses including rape; however a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had expired on these crimes.[55]

The Duvalier regimes would later become inspiration for dictator Raoul Cédras, who modeled the use of violence and torture in his regimes after that used by the Duvaliers, but used rape even more widely.[56]

The Duvalier regime revealed an intersection between gender, power, and politics in Haiti. Gender relations began to take shape in Haiti during the Duvalier regime which lasted from the late 1950s to the mid 1980s.[57] This regime was based on authoritarianism and oppression.[57] In the 1980s, Haitian society shifted due to the emergence of a new wave of feminism.[57] This new feminism was different because it took a broader approach, using the experiences of women across the Caribbean and Latin America.[57] This new feminism challenged the patriarchal policies and practices in the Duvalier regime.[57] The new feminism challenged traditional gender roles and sought to place women rights and empowerment at the forefront.[57] This new feminist movement in Haiti sought to challenge gender inequality and tackle other forms of oppression against women; including race and class[57]

In 1991 Haiti's democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a military coup led by General Raoul Cédras.[56] Cédras was in turn removed by a US occupation in 1994 and Aristide was returned to power.[56] During the Cédras regime rape became a systematic weapon of terror to quell resistance from the populace of Haiti, a majority of which supported the ousted Aristide and was against Cédras.[56] Men and women alike were targeted for killings, torture, and disappearances, but women in particular were targeted for sexual violence based on their real or supposed political beliefs.[58]

Women who opposed Cédras, or whose male relatives did, were systematically targeted for rape.[59][60][61] Women would be assaulted on the streets, while being detained by authorities, or during paramilitary or police raids on their houses.[62] Both soldiers and civilians sympathetic with them attacked women, targeting women's and human rights organizations as well as individuals.[58] The regime aimed to break down the new women's rights movement which had been forming for 20 years, and which had been instrumental in bringing Aristide to power in 1990.[58] Going into hiding or escaping the island was more difficult for women with children than it was for men who were targeted for violence.[59]

In 1994, the US military entered Haiti and the US made a deal whereby Cédras would leave power, but Haitian military personnel who had committed human rights abuses, including rape and murder, under him would not be prosecuted.[63] After the end of the Cédras regime, a Haitian human rights commission found that thousands of rapes had been reported during the Cédras regime, and thousands more were likely not reported.[64] In early 1994, a US Embassy representative estimated that a quarter of Haitians seeking political asylum in the US out of fear for their safety were women, and one in 20 of those had suffered politically motivated rape.[65] An April 1994 cable leaked from the US Embassy outraged women's rights advocates because it dismissed Haitian exiles' allegations of rape by security forces as lies (which human rights groups denied).[66]

Aristide was returned to power, but another coup in 2004 saw his exit a second time.[67]

Human rights groups have begun holding self-defense classes and issuing women whistles to provide an easy and loud way to call for help in camps.[17] Donations from abroad have helped to fund better lighting in the camps and safety trainings for women, and women in the camps have organized watch groups to ensure each other's security.[74] Grassroots organizations have set up a call center and an emergency response system for sexual violence.[3]

A group of women raped during Cédras's rise to power formed a group to help women victims of rape in Haiti called FAVILEK, which in Creole stands for "Women Victims Get Up Stand Up".[75] People from FAVILEK and other women's rights organizations are living in the camps and organizing to help women, setting up nighttime escorts and security patrols—sometimes at the risk of their own safety due to reprisals by attackers.[68]

Women’s organizations in Haiti play a crucial role in providing support for victims and survivors of sexual violence.[76] These organizations help Haitian women to advocate for policy changes within the Haitian government to be in favor of victims and survivors instead of the perpetuators.[76] These organizations provide a safe space for women to share their experiences and feel a sense of community amongst women who share similar experiences.[76] The sense of community evoked from these organizations aids in the overcoming of isolation and shame that many Haitian women feel as a result of how Haitian society views sexual violence against women.[76]

Women in Haiti who have been victims of sexual violence can also be seen as survivors and can make change within their communities.[76] By sharing their experiences and advocating for policy changes, they are able to challenge and contest the norms that contribute to sexual violence in Haiti and push other women to follow in their footsteps for a more safe and equitable society.[76]

Over a third of women in haiti have experienced sexual violence from an intimate partner.[82] There are  social and cultural factors that influence intimate partner violence.[82] Traditional gender relations  within Haitian society have given men positions of power and control over women; which has normalized the amount of violence against them.[82] Poverty, lack of access to quality education,and lack of access to healthcare has also contributed to a society where abuse occurs frequently but is not addressed.[82] Sexual violence is usually used as a way for men to assert power and dominance over women.[82] Men who may feel threatened by their partner’s independence or success are more likely to use sexual violence to maintain control to feel superior.[82] Because of conditioned gender roles and norms in Haitian society, most men believe that they should be in control of their partners to display their masculinity.[82]

A 2009 study reported that up to 225,000 Haitian children are forced to work as domestic servants, and are at grave risk of rape at the hands of their captors.[8] The children, known as restaveks, are traded into other households by their families, exchanging the children's labor for upbringing.[8][9] A 2012 report placed the number of restaveks in Haiti at between 150,000 and 500,000.[78] Two thirds of restaveks are female, and most of them come from very poor families and are given to better-off ones.[8]

Restaveks who are young and female are particularly likely to be victimized sexually.[10] Female restaveks are sometimes referred to as "la pou sa" which translates to "there for that"—'that' being the sexual pleasure of the males of the family with whom they are staying.[11] Restaveks who become pregnant are often thrown out onto the street.[9] Those who are thrown out or who run away are at risk of becoming homeless or being forced into prostitution.[78]