At the age of 17, Nicholas and his two other siblings watched his mother being brutally raped by a soldier who invaded his home. As Nicholas recalled the story, he did so with deep pain in his eyes. Nicholas also recalled the impact his mother’s rape had on the family at large. Although she was able to seek medical attention, the rape was so severe, and Nicholas’ mother was unable to carry more children, and she has only had three children, which Nicholas recalled with disdain. Nicholas also inadvertently expressed the cultural impact that not being able to carry more children had on his mother (Omari, 2015).
After Nicholas mentioned his mother’s inability to bear more children, the importance of family, child bearing, and motherhood was expressed and emphasized as paramount within Congolese society. I asked Nicholas about impact of his mother’s rape on the family and he explained that it deeply impacted his life, and in response he said the following, ‘I couldn’t look my mother in her eyes. You’re not…show more content… 4). The most vulnerable groups of rape victims fall into the following categories, widows, women who have children born of rape, women who have been gang raped, and women with severe medical sequelae, such as fistula and HIV ( Kelly, et al., 2011, p. 4). Fistula is caused when objects are violently forced into a woman’s genitals (Addario, 2012). The objects that are used to rape women are terribly harmful and damaging to women’s overall well-being. The militias who gang rape and violently rape women are known to use various objects, ranging from knives to sharp sticks. This horrific abuse is also sometimes accompanied, or substituted with a gunshot to a women’s vagina, which has also been found to cause fistula (Global Voices ,