1Haiti comes from the Indian word Ayiti, which means “mountainous land, high land.” Dèyè mòn gen mòn (“Behind mountains are more mountains”), says a Creole proverb. Haiti, an island in the Greater Antilles, has a population of approximately 10.5 million, of which 80 to 85% are of African descent, and 15 to 20% are of mixed race or European origin. Since its independence in 1804, two official languages are spoken in Haiti: French and Creole. Haitians practice several religions (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Catholic religion, Islam, the Protestant religion, voodoo, etc.).
- 1 According to a report on violence against Haitian women published by the association called SOFA (S (...)
2In this blended culture, there are no official statistical data on sexual violence1. Psychological, economic, social, and cultural barriers have impeded a culture of whistleblowing and have made it hard to gauge the true scale of rape in Haiti. The number of rape victims has escalated twice: in 2004, after the departure of ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and on January 12, 2010, after the earthquake, which left thousands dead and homeless. The magnitude of rape is linked to myriad factors: the illiteracy, psychological, and socioeconomic vulnerability of destitute women but to also Haiti’s legal system shortcomings, which dissuade victims from filing complaints. Because of the judicial system’s deficiencies and the culture of silence, rape remains an endemic evil in Haitian society. The macho culture emboldens the police authorities to adopt a judgmental stance towards the victims and bridles the prosecution of rapes. Sexual criminals easily escape the application of the July 6, 2005 decree that defines rape as a crime. They can bribe judges and have victims’ files expunged, according to testimonies collected in 2014 from association leaders.
3Generally speaking, rapists from upper or privileged classes are not prosecuted or imprisoned. This may be due to several reasons: 1) they can bribe judges and afford lawyers, 2) they can silence the victim and her/his relatives by offering them money, 3) money is also offered to the victim who files a complaint to persuade her to give up the trial, 4) the fear of being killed by bullets dissuade many victims from denouncing the rapes committed by rich or powerful men, based on testimonies collected from an association, 5) the rich criminals’ political, economic, social, and cultural capital allows them to settle rape crime out of court, and 6) rich rapists are more protected by rich victims (fear of scandal and stigmatization prevents women of upper classes more from filing a complaint about rape than by poorly educated and lower social class women, who are more daring).
4Rape induces a “mental shock” (Ferenczi, 1934) and creates an existential crisis in the victim’s own life and the interconnectedness with her community. It is the source of mental, psychological, and physical suffering. Even after several years, most raped women preserve a traumatic memory of the event. Rape’s deleterious effects on the alteration of a woman’s identity are undeniable. For the victims, forging a new identity is a matter of self-reconstruction and renaissance. Identity is defined here as “an organized set of feelings, representations, past experiences and plans for the future that relate to oneself” (Malewska-Peyre, 1985). Several rape victims turn to associations and churches to be part of a process of pacification or self-recreation. Religion provides a breeding ground for developing a new identification and healing process, and associations constitute a clinical-therapeutic field and a salutary network of solidarity.
5 Whether within their own culture or in a host (foreign) culture, a person constantly faces a double process: dying to oneself to be reborn in a new identity. This is indeed an initiatory process of death/rebirth (Eliade, 1959; Van Gennep, 1981), which can be examined from a psycho-sociological perspective. The process of death/rebirth begins at birth and continues until death. During a polytraumatic event such as rape, this process disturbs the identity dynamic that allows people to make sense of their existence or orient themselves in life. What are the consequences of rape on the identity of female victims? What feelings do victims develop during and after the rape? How does a woman cope with the trauma of rape?
- 2 The majority of these sex crimes are gang rapes. Rapists are very rarely apprehended by the police. (...)
6In 2013–2014, we interviewed thirty women victims of rape within the Haitian association “KOFAVIV” (Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim), whose head office is in Port-au-Prince. Two “profiles” of rape victims surfaced: Victims of rape mostly committed by strangers2. This group of women between 20 and 60 years old are poorly literate and conducted business activities as part of the informal economy (i.e., street vendors). They are more inclined to denounce their torturers. The second group includes victims of rape that occurred within their families; they are between 5 and 19 years old. Some were completing their undergraduate university studies at the time of the interview.
- 3 The full transcript of the interviews conducted in Haitian Creole is 389 pages long.
7The objective of this research was to describe the psychological consequences of rape on the lives of women. We used the non-directive interview method to collect data relating to their life history and sociodemographic and socioeconomic descriptions. The interviews, lasting an average of 70 minutes, were carried out in a room that the association made available to us and transcribed word-for-word for analysis purposes3.
- 4 The results of this research have not been fully exploited in this article. We mainly focused on th (...)
- 5 The majority of these rapes are rapes of neighbors or proximity. Victims and sex offenders come fro (...)
8In January 2017, we conducted an interview survey with about 20 rapists incarcerated in the civil prison of Port-de-Paix (northwest department) to broaden our understanding of sexual crimes4. The lack of privacy in the cells was a significant obstacle to gathering quality information about the rapes they committed. The majority of older rapists have denied the individual and gang rapes or have provided a tightlipped discussion of it. In contrast, the younger rapists did not hesitate to volunteer relatively rich testimonies. Unlike the rape victims we met in 2014 in Port-au-Prince, the rapists in Port-de-Paix spoke briefly during our meetings5. The lexical brevity of the interviews can be explained by the fear of being stigmatized and discriminated against within their cell (as soon as a man agrees to confess in the presence of other inmates, he is qualified from kadejakè, a pejorative term which means rapist of a woman in Creole) or by the fear of not being reintegrated into society, finally, by the mechanisms of defense of their ego, etc.
9To cross-analyze the interviews collected from women victims of rape, we used the content analysis method (Bardin, 1993). Several categories have been identified from the empirical material (hypothetico-inductive analysis approach). They are inductive abstractions that condense recurrences or semantic salience observed in the speeches of the victims. We have changed the names of the participants in order to maintain their anonymity.
10We have tried to examine rape through the prism of Van Gennep’s theory of rites of passage (1981); thereby, the experience of rape is characterized by three moments: separation, margin, and aggregation, with which feelings, cognitions, and sui generis behaviors are associated. To compensate for the limits of the contribution of this theory to the understanding of the psychological aspect of rape, we have resorted to several French-speaking and English-speaking works, which mainly concern social psychology and psychopathology.
- 6 The anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep created this ternary scheme, the methodological and theoretica (...)
11Akin to the classic rites of passage, rapes are characterized by a three-pronged structure6: the separation, the marginal, and aggregation phases.
12Women who have, against their volition, acquired the label of raped woman are different from those who have never been raped. They cannot go back to the way they were before. Their separation from non-raped and normal women is final (most women often define themselves as abnormal).
- 7 Rape decreases victims' physiological and psychological resilience capacities and affects their imm (...)
- 8 These processes of self-deterioration must be associated not only with the weakening of the physio- (...)
13After a rape, a woman usually withdraws herself from the world for days or months. The marginal phase is explained by the physical, social, economic, and psychological consequences7 of rape, which can occur simultaneously. A raped woman can decide to withdraw. After all, she is afraid of being seen as a victim because she is scared of meeting the person who raped her, because her money and her goods have been stolen, because of the need to heal her sufferings, because of the physical violence she has suffered, and because of her sense of guilt and shame, etc. (Barrois, 1988). During the marginal period, some victims try to make sense of the chaotic event they experienced. Others, on the contrary, refrain from taking care of themselves8 and from participating in social activities or helping others (crisis in the ethics of autocare and care). The marginal period is characterized by the ephemeral loss of the sense of social and cosmic connection. Rape transforms the victims’ egos into reduced or inhibited egos, by marginalizing them from the social world. Rapes have severe consequences for the victim’s sense of belonging, their sense of unity and coherence, and their sense of temporal continuity (Mucchielli, 1994).
- 9 Unlike it, the period of aggregation corresponds to processes of self-restoration or psychological (...)
14Rape victims do not consistently lead reclusive lives. The reclusion period9 is temporary. Some women are integrated into the community by an association, a church, relatives, friends, etc. As part of a process of self-reconstruction, some naïve psychologists and sociologists advise some victims—who tell them the hell they have lived through—to trivialize or play down rape; “It is the great fashion of the moment.” Their advice constitutes an obstacle to the development of a culture of denouncing rape and the promotion of a culture of resignation.
- 10 By sociolinguistic epistemic community is meant a group of individuals who have in common an instru (...)
15Women who have not been too psychologically depleted by their rape can return to their epistemic sociolinguistic community10. In reality, they cannot do it without the help of others. Associations contribute to shorten the marginal period and facilitate the victims into a process of rebirth by encouraging them to file a complaint about rape (to come out of the tomb of silence), to carry out screening tests for infectious diseases and venereal, and to follow a rehabilitation training (a sort of education in secondary prevention of rape).
16Édith Philistine is a nurse, trainer, laboratory technician, and project coordinator in an association called KOFAVIV (the association of women victims for victims). As its name suggests, this association was created by women victims of rape. KOFAVIV helps many raped women to rebuild themselves medically, socially (health, housing assistance), financially, and psychologically. Edith recounts the mission of this association: “Before telling you about KOFAVIV’s activities, I must tell you that I am a nurse, a laboratory technician within this association. I am a trainer. I am responsible for educating rape victims. I am used to going to do this training outside the capital. I am responsible for raising awareness among women in Martissant, in Cité Soleil, in ‘Gran Ravin.’ Sometimes I go to Jacmel to conduct the same job. I am an assistant, project coordinator within KOFAVIV”. KOFAVIV’s mission, she further emphasizes, is divided into three areas: prevention, support, and advocacy.
17When a raped woman comes to see us, a psychologist lifts her spirits. We do not abandon the victims. We provide them with training every Saturday. Victims have the privilege of talking about anything and everything. If something bothers them, they can express it freely. We help them find a solution to their problems. They are trained in sexually transmitted diseases, health, education, in short, everything. During the training, victims are free to express themselves as they wish, as it is an opportunity to discuss rape. All of the participants are rape victims. The victims are not embarrassed to discuss their rape. It was not easy to get the victims to talk about their rape. Before, we did not have any sponsors. We used the means at hand. We went to meet the victims on the ground since the association was not yet known. We went to specific areas to inquire about raped women. We had to be strategic to get a victim to talk about her rape. Some of them refused to discuss it. Thanks to awareness campaigns carried out by KOFAVIV in the areas, in the communities, the victims have learned to break their silence. Since 2004, I have participated in these awareness campaigns.”
18An analysis of our interviews enabled us to identify several feelings experienced by the women victim of individual or group rape. We will briefly present them here. This is a summary of the study of dozens of rape cases.
19Rapes are violent acts with a disruptive effect, insofar as it shatters the victims or shatters their identity. No matter its form, rape is an instant of confrontation with death. It is a traumatic and bloody event in the sex lives of many women. Beating to the face, bites, strangulation (or attempted strangulation), tearing of hair, scratches, foul language, slaps, presence of a firearm or a bladed weapon, etc. characterize, in general, the rapes committed by strangers. By denying “a woman her dignity as a subject free to consent to the ritual understanding of the meeting between two human beings” (Jeffrey, 2003), the rapist is incapable of ritualizing seduction and consent within an egalitarian relationship. The aggressor’s goal is to destroy his victim symbolically or physically. Sibony (1995) puts forward the idea that “the torturer’s goal is to break the other, to enter within the victim’s limits to destroy her. When, in addition, the torturer claims to be the law, he claims to be a law that spans no boundaries; hence, a totalitarian law.” Rape causes an ontological fissure (Mounier, 1946), which, for the victim, symbolizes the end of the world. The victim may feel that she no longer exists as she faces the imperative to make sense of her life. She can exhibit aggressive and autoaggressive behaviors. Sibony (1995) defines rape as “a sexual catastrophe where fantasies are no longer valid, where words no longer have any value, and where only action speaks.”
20All rapes have a disruptive function, even if sex criminals and victims are unaware of it. Some rapes amount to torture. By refusing to break the silence, the broken victims—unconsciously or not—obey the totalitarian law of their attackers. During and after their rape, they face a feeling of temporal rupture. Rape is an event that shatters a victim’s sense of existence, trust, sense of worth, and identity.
21Aurélie, whom we will talk about later, talks about the consequences of her gang rape on her humanity: “Sometimes I have the impression that I am not a human being. I try to strengthen myself. As I mentally relive the event, I feel that I am no longer a human person. I feel that my place is no longer in society. I exclude myself from it.”
22Some victims of rape face what can be called the crisis of the sense of agency because they feel incapable of acting in the world, of orienting themselves in life, or of changing the course of their existence. The intensity of this crisis varies from victim to victim. Rapes are events that overflow the identity of the victims. Personal identity can be understood as “the feeling that one has to be a unique person, with a unique history, distinct from others. Made up of the integrated body of knowledge and beliefs about oneself, it is a component of the individual personality. It gives the individual the impression of a stable coherence between his behavior, cognitions, and affects. It also makes it possible to situate oneself in relation to others” (Guichard and Huteau, 2007).
23All the women we met experienced a sense of ontological insecurity following their rape. This feeling is reflected in fear of being victims of reprisals from their torturers, by the fear of being perceived as victims of rape (the feeling of being ostracized), and by the fear of being raped again. The last two categories of fear can be apprehended in their symbolic or imaginary dimension: “At the beginning, the victim imagines the people encountered are aware of what intimate past, a fantasmal penetration occurs, this time. As a result, they evade all relationships. They cloister themselves and may for example, perceive television and the images it broadcasts as penetrating […]” (Lopez and Filizzola, 1993).
24The fear of being beaten or killed by rapists is an obstacle to denouncing and prosecuting rape if not overcome by the victims. Raped by four men in 2011 in a tent in Christ-Roi (it should be noted that five men on the same day raped her ten-year-old daughter), the fear of meeting her rapist dissuaded Corinne from filing a rape complaint: “I did not file a rape complaint because I was afraid of meeting the rapists. I have no companion […]”
25Rape is an accident of life. Rape victims struggle with negative feelings (existential uncertainty, disorientation, guilt, shame, emptiness, inferiority, etc.). However, they also struggle with feelings of fear: fear of being seen as a rape victim, fear of being infected with HIV, fear of men, fear of sexuality, fear of being seen again or of being killed by rapists, fear of leaving one’s family cocoon, fear of being unable to satisfy one’s sexual partner, fear of going out at night, fear of being raped again, fear of being insulted, fear of giving birth, fear of being loved, etc.
26Before, during, or after the rape, some women were subjected to death threats which they took seriously. Many rapes are committed at gunpoint. A woman is not only terrified by the assault itself but also of what the rapist says. Rape prompts the victim to think of death in the first person (Jankélévitch, 1966). At the time of the rape, some women lost consciousness. Many rape victims have forgotten the date and place of the traumatic event. Physical violence inflicted on a woman can cause her to lose consciousness. As evidenced by the wearing of a balaclava or a black mask, the fear of being recognized or identified by the victim incites the sexual criminal to practice—in a conscious way or not—this inhuman act of symbolic death (threat of death, physical, psychological, and psychological violence, breaking into the victim’s mental apparatus). The moment of the rape is hellish. It is the end of the world for the victim. Some raped women have developed a negative view of the social world (the world is unjust), manifesting in revenge and vulnerability syndromes.
27Philomène was afraid of being killed when she was raped. “I thought they were going to kill me after they committed their crime against me,” she said. “I knew my delusions would not make them feel sorry for me. These men are ruthless. They took me to a house. They targeted. One of them brutalized me. The rapists tore my coat. I felt like I was passing away. I told them, ‘I have two children. If you kill me, they will cry. You will regret it. There is no one helping me. I’m not getting any help.’ One strongly shoved me. Another man pointed his gun at me as he said, ‘I’m telling you shut your mouth. We are going to blow you up.’” Paulette talks about the hellish situation she experienced: “It is an inexplicable event because it is unexpected. You understand? When this happened to me, I was numbed. This is nastiness. The worst part is that the rape happened in front of my son and the other children. Did you understand the meaning of rape?”
- 11 It can be noted that if rape (sexual assault) is rarely conjugated in the feminine, it is because, (...)
28During and after their rape, many women convince themselves they are inferior or powerless. Rape can be committed in the perspective of inferiorizing a woman. The women we met did not resist their sexual assailants for fear of being killed. The development of inferiority among many Haitian women is linked to social, family, and religious culture (society, family, religions encourage women to submit to the will of males. There are still women who believe that they are physically weaker than men). Women are considered sex objects predatory males prey upon. Rape is a sexual assault, a means that allows some men to control women11 (Campbell & Muncer, 1994; Campbell, Muncer and Gorman, 1993; Campbell, Muncer and Odber, 1997, cited by Farzaneh, 2006).
29Philomène lived in a tent at Piste. She was raped at gunpoint by three men on July 30, 2012, while returning from the carnival. She was 29 years old at the time of the incident. “When I arrived,” she said, “the rapists asked me to lie on the floor. I cried. I told them, ‘Please don’t hurt me because I have two children. If you kill me, they will cry. Your conscience will suffer. There is no one helping me. I don't get any help.".’ Another man pointed his gun at me, and said:, ‘Close your mouth. I’m going to sleep with you.’ Then he continues: ‘Take off your clothes.’ I thought to myself what I was going to do with this situation. One of them tried to rip my clothes off. Another man took off my pants. So I had to obey them. As soon as he made me completely weak, one of them slept with me. While he was brutally raping me, another rapist stood guard. This one said to that one, ‘Hurry and sleep with her. It’s my turn.’”
30Paulette (51 years old) was raped in a messy camp after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, by a policeman who was accompanied by two accomplices. “I was raped after January 12, 2010. At that time, everyone was at bay. There were no more houses. Everyone was in the street. The whole world knew about it. We went to live in a camp. I lived in Akra camp, which is between Delmas 30 and Delmas 32. I have three children, including my sister’s. There were many people in this camp. If we had to live like human beings, there would have been no place at all. But we had no choice. We couldn’t go anywhere else. In my neighborhood, everyone perceives me as odd. When I leave my house, I say ‘hello’ to them. When I get home, I say ‘hello’ to them. That’s it, because I have things to do. By behaving in this way, we frustrate some people without our knowledge. Men from the neighborhood said: ‘We would like to know about the activities of this woman. She is very elegant. She doesn’t talk to anyone. She is never available. We don’t see her joking with people on the terrace. Yet she is raising three boys.’ I am never available to people. In the evening, there was a vigilante brigade. The police officers of this protection squad are aggressors. You understand? If they see that you are a woman who does not talk to anyone, a worthy woman, if they want to rape a girl in your house, they’d rather rape them in the evening instead of approaching them. These police officers turn into aggressors.”
31Amelia was gang raped in 2012. She was 32 years old at the time of the incident. According to the victim, the rape was prepared by a contender who decided to transgress the boundaries of the dating game. The rape was committed with great violence and with the threat of a 9-millimeter caliber weapon. The rapists tried to kill her after the rape. Amelia lived in a camp at the air force. She could not hold back tears during the research interview.
“A gentleman was wooing me,” she said. “I did not give him my heart. One day, he said to me, ‘When I flirt with you, you don’t listen to me.’ I didn’t flinch. I knew I had nothing against him. No matter how much he hit on me, I stood up to him. One day, around midnight, he returned to my camp. He hit the tent so hard that I thought it was daylight. I thought it was a kid doing this. Unexpectedly, I was overrun by five men. They held me savagely and brought me to where this man was waiting for me. I grabbed one of them by the shirt. Another man said: ‘Since she is holding you by the jersey, tear your clothes, shoot her inside the tent.’ Another rapist replied, ‘Don’t kill her, let’s take her somewhere.’ So they took me to another place. I didn’t walk. I rolled over on the floor. They dragged me, they hit me with a nine-millimeter rifle, and they hurt me. My head was split open. I said to myself, ‘I’m dead.’ I didn’t say anything else. When I got to the place, the five men raped me. They put me on top of a wall to shoot me. One of them asked him, ‘Where’s your dagger?’ He replied, ‘I did not take it. I will go get him.’ A passer-by who overheard us talking went to look for the Whites (the soldiers of the UN mission). When they saw the latter, they fled. So I threw myself into a ditch as dirty as a bitch.”
32Rape deprives sexuality of its intimate character. This is why some women cannot have a normal sexual relationship after a rape. Rape has severe consequences on the sexual function of the victims. Some of them even decided to bury their sex life once and for all. In their eyes, human sexuality has become a horrible practice. These women no longer define themselves as sexual subjects.
33Claudine, a 20-year-old dealer, was raped in May 2014 in a camp called Boniman. She became pregnant after a second rape which occurred in September 2014. She decided to bury her sex life for fear of increasing her psychological, social, economic, etc. miseries. “After the rapes, I rarely felt like having sex. I came to understand that the situation I found myself in was due to a man. If I take a man during my pregnancy, he will not stay with me. He’s likely to leave after sleeping with me. He will do it on the pretext that he is not the father of the child. Thus, it will only increase my miseries or my sorrows. I prefer to live with my child even if it means suffering (I spend my days, I sleep without eating or drinking, and I get up without hope). Good God doesn’t have mercy on me yet.”
34Aurélie, a motherless daughter of a carefree father, was the victim of a gang rape on April 3, 2012, in a camp located in Gérald Bataille. She suppresses her desire for sex because she thinks it is shameful to want to have sex. She wishes the flame of her sexual desire was completely extinguished. She believes that her sexuality was normal before the rape. The man she loves thinks she does not love him. He discovered his sexual dysfunctions. He doesn’t know about the rape. Aurélie shows strange behavior towards him that she is not always aware of. “Currently, I have a man in my life. I don’t consider him as my boyfriend because he has a wife and children. He is married. He has already made his life. He might love me. He helps me. I accept his help. We make love, but I can’t feel it. He used to tell me, ‘Aurélie, you have a problem, you don’t like me when I put myself in your skin.’ He doesn’t suspect the real problem I’m facing. I said to him, ‘How do I behave towards you?’ Sometimes I behave in a way I am unaware of. He’s the one telling me I’m doing this or that. I said to him: ‘Is this true?’ I am not aware of these behaviors. He doesn’t know they are linked to my rape.”
35Some women victims of rape feel estranged after the rape event. They self-exclude from certain social and cultural practices by remaining in their protective cocoon for days or months. This self-exclusion period is akin to the marginal phase that characterizes classical rites of passage (Van Gennep, 1981).
- 12 The notion of "base" here refers to a group of armed men who engage in illegal actions (theft, rape (...)
36Claudine was forced to stay at home by her executioners. “I think,” she said, “that it is a group of gangsters since they told me before leaving, ‘I dare you to go out of your home. You are dealing with the base12.’ I couldn’t leave my home for three days. Four hooded men raped me. I do not know them. But, they might know me. They are in the camp all day long. I spent three days inside a shelter.”
37Josette is a bread seller who lived in a tent at Christ-Roi. Born in 1957, she was raped by a stranger in 2011 at gunpoint near her tent in the morning. After the rape, she decided to stay at home for a while. “After my rape, I didn’t want to live anymore. While I was practicing sexual abstinence, I was raped. I was forced to have sex. At that time, I was not feeling well at all. I no longer went out on the street. I stopped going to sell bread…”
38The women victims of rape(s) we met all reported that rape is an unforgettable event. They have developed a traumatic personality (Crocq, 1997, 1999). Their rape provoked what one might call the crisis of transtemporal identity (transtemporal identity is the perception of a permanent self or the feeling of permanence in time and space) insofar as the victims cannot go back to the way they were before. As they say, you can accept the rape, but you can’t forget it. Rape transformed the victims negatively by forcing them to acquire an unwanted and a demeaning status. Although they had previously had consensual sex, most of the women were forced to acquire the status of raped and/or devirginized women (some of them never had sexual relations before the facts).
- 13 Caenée was raped by Poseidon (Greek god of the sea, oceans, earthquakes…). She asked him to turn he (...)
39Rape causes some victims to de-identify with the female world by changing their sexual orientation (caenism13) or to identify with their attackers. Psychically and psychologically, they go back and forth between the anteriority and the posteriority of the rape. They have lost an important part of their self. Rape is a crime against human dignity, against the human subject, or against being. In victims who have been savagely “initiated” by their executioners into sexuality (the victims who were virgins), rape can induce two types of fantasy (Deutsch, 1994): the fantasy of parthenogenesis (some of them may think to give birth to a baby without any male help) and the fantasy of prostitution (“I’m humiliated, I’m going to put myself down”). Many prostitutes have been raped. The fantasy of parthenogenesis can be linked to erotophobia (fear of erotic love) and fear of potential abusers. Rape has an impact on the “sacredness of cohesion,” whose function was described by Caillois (1988) described in these terms: “It supports and makes the secular universe last, ensuring its cohesion, unification, and duration. It is that it is a factor of stability, continuity, permanence; it is a regulating principle of life, a principle of retention which promotes economy and stagnation, a heaviness which retains in existence the being who dies of not dying.”
40If rape is perceived by many victims as an existential threat, it is because it constitutes a serious attack on self-preservation, that is to say, on the body as a symbolic structure of meanings and values (Sullivan, Landau, and Kay, 2012). It reinforces the belief that good and bad things happen to good and bad people, respectively (Lerner, 1987, 1998).
41Carole was the victim of a gang rape in 2012 in Acacia (Christ-Roi) between 9:30 am and 10 pm. She was 39 years old. This roasted sausage seller was on her way home when four strangers surrounded her to rape her. They took her to a collapsed and abandoned house. She screamed to dissuade them from taking action. They punched and slapped her. The rape she suffered altered her human identity. She doesn’t feel normal like everyone else. “I don’t feel normal like everyone else since I was raped. I take medication. Sometimes I take leaf decoctions in order to become a normal woman again. I still suffer from rape.”
42Some women are raped several times a year by the same criminals. The addictive and compulsive sexuality of the latter is linked to the fact that they are unable to disentangle themselves from the pleasurable dimension of rape. Most of their victims are obsessed with a great desire for revenge. This can be fueled not only by the absence of a compensating procedure for rape victims but also by the climate of impunity enjoyed by sex criminals. The feeling of revenge may give birth to an injustice, which is explained by the loss of their belief in a just world (Brems and Wagner, 1994; Hafer and Bègue, 2005).
43Rosemaine (21, mother of a four-year-old boy) was raped on August 10, 2012, in Jean Marie Vincent’s tent near Chancerelle Hospital around one in the morning. She and her sister-in-law lived in this tent. During her absence, two men came to rape her. She was beaten and slapped. Her money was stolen. She wants rape victims to kill their rapists. “I ask all women rape victims to kill their torturers. Even if they do jail, they won’t stop raping women.”
44Aurélie, a victim of whom we have already spoken, expresses her feeling of revenge by using imprecatory terms, “I have always asked God to make me witness the deaths of the three young men who raped me. I asked God to kill them. We know that we shouldn’t wish someone bad. But I still wish them harm. I pray to God. I am Christian. I can tell right from wrong. God knows everything. I myself have always wished these people evil. I want to say to them as they die in front of me, ‘Do you remember what you did to me? Do you know what life is like? Here is the other side of the coin…’”
45Many women lost consciousness during the rape they suffered. Their psychic apparatus broke down. Paradoxical as it may sound, the sense of strangeness or loss of self-awareness experienced during the rape enables them to cope with their likely death. To save their lives, they let themselves be raped.
46Lise is a former street vendor. She was selling shoes when she was raped in 2004 by three men at gunpoint. The events took place in an old abandoned house. His executioners stole her money and shoes. “[…] One of them touched me while the others looked at the sandals. They carried me inside a house. They beat me and raped me […]. The events took place in 2004. I lost consciousness…”
47The feeling of not being yourself can last for years. Leonise was raped when she was twelve years old by a paternal surrogate (an adopted brother of her father, who was housed by Leonise’s mother. Her father lives in the United States). At 33, she still expresses her feeling of depersonalization (the cause of her rape would be part of a centripetal causal movement. She would have been born to be raped. There would be something about her that attracts rapists): “Sometimes I feel dirty. I am a bundle of sins. I’m something that everyone loves that everyone wants to have. I am a bundle of sins, a bundle of charms. I have a congenital problem. If I knew the cause of it, it would be subtracted from me. I say to myself, ‘How can I remove an evil that I was born with? Won’t I be a different person if I take it off? Won’t I take a part of myself away?’”
- 14 Some authors define guilt as a moral emotion (moral emotion, cf. Haidt, 2003). If the victim can ge (...)
48During the rape, the sexual criminal asks the victim to be silent, shot or killed with a stabbing weapon. The threat of death is not always enough to silence the victim. For this reason, the rapist closes his mouth to the victim. The victim is forced to contain her emotions. After the rape, the executioner asks the victim to remain silent, otherwise she will be killed or not taken seriously. During the rape, the victim’s silence may give the rapist the impression that the victim has given her consent. It seems that this silence contributes to the victim’s feeling of guilt. Indeed, some rape victims say they should have made noise to deter their attacker(s). Because of the law of silence, the majority of rapes suffered by women can be defined as cryptorites (versus phanerorites), that is, rites that are known only to themselves and their torturers. For Lopez and Filizzola (1993), the feeling of guilt14 can help the victim of a rape to think about and to overcome the rape, by giving a direction to his particular history: “The guilt will institute (structurally) the subject as a subject of the traumatic adventure. The belief that she is responsible for what happened to her can save her from the unthinkable. She can thus tell what will become her story and thus gain access to a symbolic dimension.” Among the factors explaining the silence of rape victims (Germain and Langis, 1990), it is worth mentioning that “shame, guilt, fear of the aggressor’s revenge, fear of not being believed, to forget, the difficulty of believing in what has just happened, the apprehensions about the legal process…”
49Zabette was born in 1962. She is the mother of five children, and she was raped by a boss who was accompanied by two accomplices. During the rape, she contained her emotions on the fear of being killed. “These young men walk like…,” she said. There are some who have just drunk alcohol. They are drunk. They are chubby. We cannot fight against them. If you scream, they’ll corner you. You have to resign yourself to it. If the person tells you they are going to hit you, it could be fatal. He can give you a blow that blocks your heart. If you die, your children are going to be in dire straits. All we do is obey the aggressor. We do not have a choice.”
50The raped women we met have all testified to the dehumanizing power of the rape they endured. Most of them suffer from personality disorders (low self-esteem, suicidal ideation, desire to hurt others, irritability, self-hatred, impulsivity, etc.). They have been brutalized, instrumentalized, or objectified by their torturers. They have acquired a sense of non-human identity (Darves-Bornoz, 1996), even if only temporarily.
51Babette’s executioner denied her of her humanity. “The rape did not last long, since the rapist was in a hurry. He didn’t spend a lot of time on my belly. He treated me like an animal.”
52Mata (19) was raped by her “adoptive father” (50) in December 2011, during an eight-day stay with him. She cannot find an answer to the question “why me?” The rapist had gained her trust completely before taking action. “He always showed me that he loved me like his daughter. His wife only gave him boys. He always told me he would like to have a daughter like me. After the rape, I felt like I was no longer a human person. I was like, ‘Did I deserve this rape? Why did this happen to me? Now, this has happened to me!’”
53Rapes are rites of violence intended to humiliate the victims. The verb “humiliate” and the derivative substantive “humiliation” is used a lot by the victims in their discursive productions. By humiliating their victims, rapists make rape victims feel strongly about their ontological vulnerability. One in six women will be raped in her lifetime by a man. Rape can be considered the absolute expression of male domination. In Haiti, rape is a sword of Damocles that hangs over the heads of all women. Sex criminals do not lower their victims in order to elevate them to human or female dignity. The humiliating function of rape is to demean victims to the rank of submissive and dominated women.
- 15 The feeling of shame prevents victims of rape committed by strangers from leaving their family coco (...)
54Carole recounts how she was humiliated: “I was humiliated. Some people may think that I am sick. After learning that three or four men have raped you, they humiliate you. You have become a worthless person without dignity. I was ashamed15 to leave my house. I stayed home. I didn’t want people to know the facts. I felt humiliated.”
55Philomène also recounts her ordeal: “I didn’t feel normal. I felt humiliated in society. I didn’t feel like a person. I don’t see where I am. Good God allowed me to pull myself together. When I got home, I told my sister about the rape. The latter did not welcome me. She stopped talking to me. I thought my life was over. I was afraid of being infected by the rapists. The next day, I went to the hospital. Thank God I was HIV negative.”
- 16 Some of them see rape as a simple incident that will not happen again in the future. This is a defe (...)
56The attitude of denial16 of the rapists we met in the civil prison of Port-de-Paix in January 2017 is linked not only to a poor and weak conceptualization of rape but also to the perpetuation of male domination. For some of them, there is no rape without physical violence: “In my opinion, the word rape (kadejak) means when you don’t know how to go about flirting with a girl, you have her rape and we beat her,” says Robert. For other rapists, a woman is raped when the rapist is caught in the act of raping her. For example, Jacques does not admit having raped his neighbor because he was not caught with his hand in the bag. “For my part,” he said, “I am the victim of abuse. I am in misery. I am convicted without proof. I should have been caught in the act to be able to convict me. According to my conscience, I did not rape this girl.”
57Many rapists claim that their victims were not virgins before the rape they committed in order to ease their conscience. We can hypothesize that for these rapists, a woman who is used to making love or who is already deflowered should not refuse sex. Paul, who raped his ex-girlfriend, said, “I slept with her at my house. She had had sex before. Many people know this.”
58Pierre (19) accepts his identity as a rapist. However, the implicit meaning of his words lies in the fact that his ex-girlfriend, a 16-year-old teenager, should not have filed a rape complaint since she had already lost her virginity when he raped her. “I raped her in December,” said Pierre. “The rape happened in my house. She told the commissioner I deflowered her. I had sex with her, but she was not a virgin.”
59Many rapists claim to have had a romantic relationship of a few months or a long time with the women they raped. In their opinion, a woman should not refuse sex to her lover. Some incarcerated rapists have attempted to downplay the ineffaceable act of rape by emphasizing the brevity of its production (“it didn’t last many minutes”).
60Rape is the site of the realization of male sexual fantasies. Rape is a tool that many men use to subjugate women to their will, reify them (Daligand and Gonin, 2000), humiliate them, etc.
61Contrary to popular belief, rape also has psychological consequences on the lives of sex offenders. They are not impregnable offenses compared to the physical, psychological, and psychic effects of the weapon of war against women that rape constitutes. They may experience feelings of regret, humiliation, shame, humiliation, etc. Wilbert bitterly regrets raping his ex-girlfriend. He is afraid of dying in prison. “I should not have committed this rape. When you’re behind bars, you see all your mistakes, mistakes you shouldn’t have made. While I am in prison, I see that there are easy women on the streets. There are those who agree to sleep with a man for 25 or 50 gourdes. I am incarcerated for rape. I shouldn’t be there. If I had to sentence myself, I would sentence myself to… There are people who die five months before the end of a nine-year sentence. I can die in my cell. There are no distractive activities. There is no way…”
62A rite of violence is an endemic social evil, an iterative social fact that generates disorder. It, therefore, exists in all human societies (sociogenic fact). Rapes are rites of physical, psychological, and psychological violence that can be initiatory trials for rapists with multiple dimensions: symbolic, individual, and collective. These are sexual initiation practices for many of them. Rape is a subjective experience, a social, psychological, and psychic construction.
63From a legal point of view, rape is defined as “any act of sexual penetration of any kind, committed on the person of another by violence, coercion, threat or surprise.” The Haitian Penal Code punishes it:
64“Art. 278. (Decree of 6 July 2005, art. 2). Anyone who has committed a crime of rape, or is guilty of any other sexual assault, consumed or attempted with violence, threats, surprise or psychological pressure against the person of either sex will be punished with ten years of forced labor.
65Art. 279. (Decree of July 6, 2008, art. 3). If the crime was committed on the person of a child under the age of fifteen, the guilty person will be punished with fifteen years of forced labor.
66Art. 280. (Decree of 6 July 2005, art. 4). The penalty will be that of hard labor for life if the culprits are from the class of those who have authority over the person against whom they committed the attack or who abuse the authority conferred on them by their duties, or if the person culprit, whoever it is, was aided in his crime, by one or more persons, or if death ensued.”
- 17 In France, numerous studies have shown that it is the poor criminals that are imprisoned (Le Goazio (...)
67Illiterate or poorly educated rapists belong to the lowest rungs of the social ladder and constitute the highest proportion of the criminal clientele, according to observations and collected testimonies. Their financial poverty, low education or illiteracy, ignorance of the law17 or the mysteries of the judicial system, the weakness of their social and cultural capital, and the fact that they can easily confess under pressure (judges, victims, relatives of victims, lawyers, etc.) explain their imprisonment.
68The rapes suffered by Haitian women are rites of violence due to the spatial, social, and economic vulnerability of many of them. Following their rape, women became more vulnerable psychologically, socially, and economically. Raped women are marked for life. Rape is a physical, mental, and psychological stigma that time does not easily erase. There are consequences not only on the lives of the victims but also on those of their loved ones. A raped woman is a woman whose life has been stolen. Many victims fail to overcome the fears, feelings, and behavioral problems that follow their rape. The negative feelings engendered by rape are interrelated, as we have shown. Some of them are temporary; others can last for years or even a lifetime.
69Despite the dramatic consequences of rape, women can rebuild themselves or give meaning to their lives. They are affected differently by the disruptive dimension of rape. Just as a starfish can rebuild a broken limb, some rape victims rebuild themselves.
70For rapists, rape has a hedonistic and eudemonistic dimension (it gives them pleasure and happiness). They produce a pleasant feeling that allows them to cope with their frustration (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer and Sears, 1939). Rape is a crime that can be committed by men who starve for attention and affection. For them, rape is a place for restoring self-esteem or affirming male identity. Rape committed with great violence can be classified as an ordalic rite (Le Breton, 2005). These would be extreme sports (sexuality is a sport. Nowadays, we talk about sexual performance) where rapists play with death and seek intense sensations. The victim can kill a rapist during a rape. Raping is risky conduct (sick victims can infect sexual assailants who do not use a condom. Some victims kill their rapist during or after the rape). Are there societies without rape? Is the end of rape possible? The majority of the women we met were raped by strangers. Are the latter psycho-sociopaths, who rape women in revenge for a life that mistreats them? Self-defense strategies prevent rapists from recognizing their crime (Billon, 1984). Rape is at the service of violence inherent in human societies (Damus et al., 2017). However, education in primary and secondary rape prevention is not impossible, but some rapes can be avoided.
71To reduce the inequalities between rich rapists and poor rapists in terms of criminal treatment, victims of all social categories must be encouraged to develop a culture of denouncing and bringing rape to justice. Formal educational structures (school, university), families, and associations must, thus, play a leading role (Damus et al., 2017).
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