I just sat through a very painful hour and 18 minutes. I had to see it though. I had to hear the voices of the women whose suffering is infinite, whose bodies and minds and spirits had been ravaged and destroyed. It made me ill to hear the voices of the men, the rapists, justify their crimes, as if talking about petty theft rather than the devestation of a human being. My heart is broken at the image of the women’s eyes, their blank and listless stares as they relived the horror on camera.

How can we live in a world where this happens? How can we live with ourselves knowing that only an ocean away, the entire sex of a country the size of Western Europe has been systematically destroyed through sexual violence. The atrocities against these women made me feel guilty, like my own experiences with sexual violence were possibly pleasureable in light of their torture. Women raped with guns and swords. Women raped by twenty men, one right after the other. Women with their vaginas, bladders, and rectums torn beyond repair. Women made to watch their babies and children murdered, and then forced by the rapists to eat their dead bodies. Women with no one to turn to, abandoned by husbands and family, their bodies broken. One victim was four years old. The camera stared at her face. I wanted to die.

It was nearly impossible to watch. It was very graphic and very candid, emotional, and blunt. I cried a number of times…and it takes a lot for me, in general. But more people need to see it. I was not even aware of this issue…not to this extent anyway.

I wish was studying to be a doctor instead, so I could move to the DCR and help every woman I could.