Josephine, 28, said she fled her home in Bangui with her husband and five young children due to fighting in the city in October 2014. When she returned to her neighborhood to collect clothes and dishes for the family, three anti-balaka stopped her and took her to a compound, where they raped her with a broken beer bottle. “When they pushed it in, blood flowed out and I lost consciousness,” she said. “After, they went in the neighborhood and said, ‘We stopped a wife of Muslims.’” Following the rape, her husband called her “a wife of the anti-balaka” and eventually they separated. Josephine said she suffers constant headaches, and is haunted by memories of the violence.
© 2017 Smita Sharma for Human Rights Watch