PATTERNS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
LOCATION AND TIMING OF ATTACKS
The majority of sexual assaults were initiated in the woman’s own home (Table 3). The forest
and fields also accounted for a large proportion of assaults. The category “Other” included the
market, water sources and other people’s homes, as well as public buildings such as hospitals,
shops and offices.
Location
Own Home
Fields
Forest
Road
Other
Not Specified
Total
Frequency
2,437
706
633
257
178
100
4,311
Percentage
56.5
16.4
14.7
6.0
4.1
2.3
100
Table 3. Location of attack among sexual violence survivors presenting to Panzi Hospital.
Sexual violence survivors reported that the majority of attacks occurred at night (57%). Just over
one third (34%) of women reported that they were attacked during the day and 7% reported that
they were attacked in the evening.
PERPETRATORS
Each rape experience had only one code for perpetrator even though there may have been a
group of perpetrators (example: a group of Interahamwe perpetrators would have had a single
perpetrator code of “Interahamwe”). Additionally, there were no mixed perpetrators described in
this dataset, (example: civilian perpetrator and Mai Mai perpetrator implicated in the same rape)
thus each perpetrator code is exclusive.
The mean number of assailants per sexual assault was 2.5 with a median of 2 and a range of 1 to
greater than 20 assailants. As shown in Figure 1, 42% of women simply described the
perpetrator(s) as “assailant(s)” and no further identifying information could be gathered. Twentyfour percent of assailants were described as being either, “soldiers” or “men in military uniform”
without identifying any particular military affiliation. Another 28% of perpetrators were
identified as belonging to a specific military group and the final 6% of perpetrators were
classified as civilians. Specific military affiliations included Interahamwe, Hutu soldiers,
FARDC, Mai Mai, Nkunda soldiers, Congolese soldiers, Tutsi soldiers, Soldats de 106, Rwandan
soldiers, FDD, RCD, Mudundu 40, Mutebutsi, and Rasta.
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