Woman Recounts Gang-Rape Horror in Haiti

By TOM HAYS

The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; 12:00 AM

NEW YORK -- One of three women who claim she was gang-raped by soldiers loyal to a former Haitian strongman testified Tuesday that one attack took place as her five small children watched.

Masked men burst into her home in Port-au-Prince in 1994 and raped her while her children saw "everything that was being done to me," she said through an interpreter and behind a large video screen to shield her identity.

The hearing was about whether Emmanuel "Toto" Constant owes at least $1 million in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages to each of three women named as plaintiffs.

The witness, who fled to the U.S. in 2003, has accused Constant of sanctioning the systematic rape of women in the early 1990s to silence slum-dwellers still devoted to the ousted former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein granted her anonymity based on fears she still could be targeted for retribution.

The defense table was vacant: Constant remains in jail on Long Island after being charged in July with mortgage fraud. His attorney in that case has declined to comment.

Constant emerged as the feared leader of a right-wing paramilitary group after Aristide was deposed in 1991. It terrorized and slaughtered Aristide loyalists between 1991 and 1994, human rights groups say.

The alleged rape victim testified that her ordeal began when her husband, a taxi driver and fierce Aristide supporter, vanished in 1992. She described taking to the streets and voicing her despair.

Even after being jailed and beaten, she remained vocal until five men arrived at her door in April 1994. They beat up her 8-year-old son and took turns raping her, she said. Two months later, the nightmare was repeated.

Three months later, she saw a doctor who delivered some shocking news: She was pregnant by one her attackers. A son was born on Feb. 12, 1995. He and the rest of her children still live in Haiti.