ABSTRACT
Sexual violence is an issue both overwhelming in its enormity and yet in many ways hidden. The World Health Organisation special publication on violence details that women in a range of countries, from ten per cent in Brazil to forty-six per cent in Peru, report incidents of attempted or completed forced sex by intimate partners during their lifetime. In statements that victims of rape made to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in the UK, many women said that they did not blame the child, whom they saw as an “innocent victim of war”. When pregnancy results from rape, the family, the community, everyone has views about the woman—if they know—and about the potential baby. The baby presented with distress and feeding difficulties, refusing bottles and Shoemark Helen had “lost all confidence in her”.
