Child sex abuse triples as people flee, charity says

Save the Children said yesterday it had witnessed a “horrifying” spike in the number of children being sexually assaulted in DR Congo, recording more than triple the number compared to a year ago.

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"Armed men entered our house and raped me, my sister and my mother,” a 16-year-old Congolese girl told the charity.

She spoke to Save the Children in neighbouring Burundi where she fled with her family and is now living in a refugee camp. “It is very hard to look my mother in eye after what happened, but also very difficult for our mother to talk to us about it.”

Fighting once again erupted in the restive eastern DR Congo earlier this year when the Rwandan-backed M23 force seized large swathes of the region.