Haiti, One Sad Year Later

I came across this article recently and it's one of the most gut-wrenching and depressing piecess of journalism I've read in awhile. But for anyone with a beating heart it's a must read.

From Mother Jones...

When Alina happened upon a group of men—too many to count—raping a girl in the squalid Port-au-Prince camp where she and other quake victims lived, she couldn't just stand there. Maybe it was because she has three daughters of her own; maybe it was some altruistic instinct. And the 58-year-old was successful, in a way, in that when she tried to intervene, the men decided to rape her instead, hitting her ribs with a gun, threatening to shoot her, firing shots in the air to keep other people from getting ideas of making trouble as they kept her on the ground and forced themselves inside her until she felt something tear, as they saw that she was bleeding and decided to go on, and on, and on. When it was over, Alina lay on the ground hemorrhaging and aching, alone. The men were gone, but no one dared to help her for fear of being killed...

...The French military policemen hanging around my hotel say the same thing. They are soldiers of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti and their faces darken when they talk about the camps. "Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape," they say, shaking their heads. "A lot of rape."

If you want to help, click here for a list of NGOs recommended by Mother Jones.