![]() When I’m in the fields, I get scared thinking they’re still coming to get me.” Back home, they struggle with trauma and often face stigma. Hostages are released only after relatives pay a ransom. “They’d rape us next to the male hostages who had their feet and hands firmly tied.” “They raped us in the morning, during the day, and at night.” When I dared to cry, he would hit me in the head.” ![]() “After that, he would do anything he wanted to me. “One of them put his gun to my head and said that if I tried to move it, he would kill me.” Survivors recount constant death threats, beatings, rape, and exposure to harsh weather as they were held outdoors for several days. “Then, they showed us human skulls and said that if our family didn’t pay our ransom, we would die.” We were in so much pain that we could barely sit up.” “When we stopped along the way they whipped us badly on our backsides. Kidnapped on her way home from working in the fields “I felt people grabbing my shoulders… They hit me on the head with the butt of their rifle.” Criminal gangs in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga Park have kidnapped scores of people for ransom since 2017, including many women and girls who endure sexual violence during captivity.
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