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27-02-2025
Warning: This article contains distressing content, including descriptions of rape, from the start.
KHARTOUM: “He told me that if I tried to escape, he would kill me.”
Pascaline, 22, recalls the words of her rapist at a prison in Goma, the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in the early hours of 27 January.
“I was forced to let it happen instead of losing my life,” Pascaline tells the BBC.
He was the second man to rape her at Munzenze prison. The first attack was so violent that she passed out.
Her attackers came over the wall from the men’s block right next door called “Safina”, she says.
“We heard a noise as they jumped on the water tanks. There were so many of them, and we were so scared. The ones who were unlucky were raped. The ones who were lucky got out without being raped.”
Chaos was spreading through the jail, and the surrounding city. Rwandan-backed M23 rebels were closing in on Goma, after a rapid advance through the region.
Most of the prison guards and the city authorities had already fled. Shooting could be heard outside the jail.
Hours later, inside the compound, there was a fire – apparently set by male prisoners as they tried to escape.
By morning, about 4,000 male inmates had broken out. But few of the women managed to get away. A total of 132 female prisoners and at least 25 children burned to death, according to two sources.
A UN official told the BBC that “at least 153 women had perished”, quoting “reliable sources in the prison”.
A month on, Pascaline has come back to the charred shell of the prison complex, where an empty watch tower still stands.
She wants to tell her story and is willing to be identified. She is also a voice for the dead.
She walks through the main yard of the women’s section, glancing at the scorched walls, scattered cooking pots and piles of clothing. Her hand comes to her mouth in wordless horror, and she shakes her head.
“At one point I didn’t know what was happening anymore,” she says. “It was after seeing the others die that I began to pull myself together, I would say that it was God who wanted me to be saved.”
Pascaline, an onion seller, wound up behind bars here when her employer accused her of theft.
Nadine, 22, has also come back to the prison for the first time. In her mind, she cannot escape it.
“When I sleep at night, everything I’ve seen here comes back to me. I see the dead again – as many dead bodies as I saw here until I got out. Instead of opening the door, they let us die like animals here.”
Nadine says she was also raped by two men.
“They came with alcohol,” she tells the BBC. “They wanted to drug people. They took me by force. They took all the women here.”
The BBC cannot verify how many women were raped that night, out of a total of 167 who, sources say, were being held.
Nadine is furious at the authorities for locking her up in the first place over an unpaid debt, she says, and then failing to let her out.
“I don’t think that justice can exist in Congo,” she says. “I condemn the way the government is running things.” (BBC)
