The nightmare in your pocket - Cape Cod Times

At an anti-genocide conference in Washington, D.C., in a seminar called "Sexual Gender-Based Violence: Rape as a Weapon of War in Congo," I sat next to one of my former students, now a college freshman dedicated to human rights activism. That's when I passed this young woman a note. I wrote, "What is a traumatic fistula?"

After she realized that I really did not know, she wrote back: "In women, when raped at a young age and/or get pregnant, their under-developed urethra is torn, causing them to lose control of their bladder and can cause infection in the womb."

Women and girls, some younger than my high school students, are gang-raped by rebel or even government soldiers in the mining areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as these vicious armies fight for territory to control the mines that feed our electronics.

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