Gender and Violence in Haiti: Women's Path from Victims to Agents

5. Victims’ Help-Seeking and the Criminal-Justice Response

99 5 Victims’ Help-Seeking and the Criminal-Justice Response In spite of the commitments to the international community by the Haitian government and the efforts undertaken by the national legislature, sexual abuse and rape are still widely and systematically perpetrated throughout the country across social and economic lines. The underreporting of women’ rights violations, the loss of rape cases at various stages of the criminal-justice process, and, ultimately, the widespread impunity with which males perpetuate sexual violence against women derive from the inequalities in the formal legal system, the victims’ internalization of gender stereotypes and hierarchy, their fear of social stigmatization and reprisal, and the high levels of corruption and dysfunction within the security and judicial sectors. During my fieldwork in Haiti, I interviewed many women who had been victims of sexual violence either in the domestic realm or in the context of armed violence. As explained in Chapter 3, some of the victims decided at some stage in their life to join the armed groups and become perpetrators of violence. Rape and sexual abuse are so pervasively perpetrated in Haiti that women and girls are often victims not only of incest or of the fury and revenge of gangs but even of random attacks by strangers and neighbors. Poor social conditions, domestic unrest, and rampant poverty afflict the majority of the Haitian population, of which women and girls remain the most vulnerable part. In most countries, sexual violence against women and girls is widely underreported. Haiti is no exception. 100 GENDER AND VIOLENCE IN HAITI Indeed, when I interviewed representatives of civil society organizations providing medical assistance and psychological support to rape victims, they lamented their patients’ reluctance to report the attacks to competent authorities. Some of these organizations were exploring the possibility of including judicial assistance in their services. However, they reported that when asked whether they wanted to press charges and pursue judicial proceedings, most women firmly refused. Consistent with such accounts, among all the victims I personally interviewed for the purpose of my research, only one of them had reported the attack. She revealed having been raped twice, but only the first time did she report the crime to the authorities. Therefore, my recurrent question to representatives of civil society organizations was why women victims of sexual violence seek justice so seldom and why the outcome is so poor for the very few who do. The following analysis aims to respond to such questions by providing insights into women’s and girls’ decision making around help-seeking and resistance. It provides a deep understanding of the cultural barriers and the practical and institutional obstacles Haitian women face when they are in need of protection and justice. In particular, the following sections investigate the shortage of police and prosecutorial systems, the lack of enforcement, and the ultimate implications these obstacles have on women ’s decisions about reporting cases of rape. No proper understanding of the shortcomings and failures of the criminal-justice responses to genderbased violence and women’s violence in Haiti can be achieved without an engaged analysis of the different actors, functions, and responsibilities involved in the system. Finally, this chapter also includes an analysis of a few more recent proceedings that have succeeded in providing judicial redress to the claimants. The aim is to discern the reasons for these few but nevertheless positive outcomes and the incentives women had to report the attacks in these cases, as well as to suggest improved ways of responding to violence against women. Underreporting of Rape Cases Representatives of the Ministry for the Status of Women interviewed for the purpose of this study asserted that the lack of official national statistics VICTIMS’ HELP-SEEKING AND THE RESPONSE 101 on violence against girls and women significantly limits an accurate evaluation of the situation in the country and, ultimately, compromises any attempt by women’s associations and civil society institutions to raise awareness and promote the political legitimacy of the issue. According to a study of 1,705 women undertaken by the Centre Haïtien de Recherches et d’Actions pour la Promotion Féminine (CHREPROF) (1996) and reported by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women on the mission to Haiti (United Nations Economic and Social Council 2000), an estimated 66 percent of victims (girls and women) never reported attacks for fear of reprisals and social ostracization, as well as because of the lack of...