I Coast rape survivors seek healing

JULIETTE Bie was at her sick mother's bedside when two men barged through the door of her home in western Ivory Coast and raped her during tumultuous political unrest in 2011.

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Calm has returned to the west African country in the years since that post-election crisis, which killed around 3 000 people.

But hundreds of survivors of sexual violence, many fearful of the stigma that victimhood carries, have had to band together in an effort to rebuild their shattered selves.

Like other women interviewed, Bie — whose mother witnessed the crime and died shortly after — never pressed charges against her rapists.

“We hid ourselves because we were ashamed,” she said.