Sexual Violence as a Weapon in Colombia's Conflict

Sexual abuses have been in the news not only because of the endless parade of headline-making sex crimes, often targeting children, but also because of revelations of wholesale sexual attacks being used as a weapon of war by Colombia's various armed groups. 

A recent report by the Centro de Memoria titled 'The War Written on the Body' counted more than 15,000 sexual attacks amidst Colombia's armed conflict, committed by armed groups of all types, including the official military. That number, of course was surely a huge undercount, since most such crimes are never reported.

The report included testimonies by women and girls recounting attacks by armed groups, often as punishment for supposed disobedience. One woman, for example, had helped her children escape from being recruited as FARC fighters, for which misdeed the guerrillas gang raped her. Other women were targeted with attacks as warnings to or punishment against their husbands, for example for not paying protection money to the armed groups. 

One FARC leader, Raul Reyes, who was killed in 2008 by a Colombian military bombing of his camp in Ecuador, kept an escort of female guerrillas, some as young as 10 or 11, whom he sexually abused.

A graph shows numbers of reported cases of sexual abuse
related to Colombia's armed conflict. Cases
peaked in 2002 and 2014.

A young girl recruited by the guerrillas described in the Centro Memoria's report how the guerrillas arranged newly arrived girls up in two rows: the virgins on one side, the rest on the other. The virgins were given to the guerrilla commanders for their recreation, while lower-echelon guerrillas had to make do with the others.

Female guerrillas who became pregnant were usually forced to have abortions or had their newborns taken from them.

A conservative politician calls for
life sentences for child abusers.

Sex crimes are also in the news because some conservative politicians are advocating for capital punishment or life in prison for child rapists. That has many asking why the demobilized guerrillas - many of whom committed sex crimes, as well as murder, kidnapping and forced displacement - should get off with little more than a symbolic punishment, and even be allowed to hold political office.

And I also wonder why the wave of accusations (almost all of them certainly true) of sexual misbehavior against prominent men in the U.S. has not spread to other places, particularly Latin America. After all, in a nation like Colombia where many men feel entitled to make sexual comments to women on the street, and where machismo culture is strong, is it credible that much worse things don't happen in the privacy of offices and studios?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Mother's Long, Futile Fight for Justice

In August 2007, two United States soldiers met Olga Castillo's 12-year-old daughter in a restaurant in the town of Melgar, took her to their base and raped her, Castillo says.

Castillo with a friend on Plaza Bolivar.

Since that day, the alleged crime has consumed Castillo's life. She lists off a long series of Colombian government and international human rights institutions she's appealed to - and had the door shut in her face: the ACNUR, the U.S. Embassy, the Defensoria del Pueblo and others.

Worst of all, the U.S. military men she accuses of attacking her daughter had diplomatic immunity and quickly returned home, where they're out of reach of Colombian law and Castillo's efforts.

The U.S. military did its own investigation of the case. But, according to a late 1989 news article - the most recent I've found - the U.S. never even showed the report to Colombian authorities.


All this despite a Colombian police report finding that the girl had been raped, and witnesses who saw the Americans' car arrive at the base late at night and drop the girl off near a public park the next day.

An unsophisticated person who makes her living selling handicrafts at fairs, Castillo - who is 40 but appears a decade older - seems confused by the many different agencies she's appealed to and received no help from. She's also frustrated because she doesn't understand computers.

"If I only knew how to use the Intenet, I could put international pressure on these people," she
believes. (If it were only so simple.)

While I have no independent evidence about what happened to Castillo's daughter, the woman seems to brim over with sincerity, and her feeling of trauma and injustice are palpable.

'Displaced by the Plan Colombia,' says Castillo's sign.

"What hurts most is that (my daughter) hasn't finished high school," says Castillo. "She should go to college. It's a daily torture."

Her daughter, now a young woman with a little girl of her own, doesn't like to talk about what happened to her that day in 2007. However, the trauma may have impacted her life far after. Castillo says that her daughter's partner beat her, injuring one of her kidneys, which had to be removed.

A man helps Castillo pack her tent on Plaza Bolivar.
She has not been given a permit to protest on the plaza.

Castillo believes that police and government institutions are actively shutting doors to her, and even accuses them of threatening her. Perhaps she's paranoid. Perhaps her long and unrewarded fight for justice has made her so.

Personally, I'd bet that Colombian and U.S. military authorities feel so certain that Castillo will get no help that they just ignore her.

The facts of this case aside, Castillo's situation is indicative of the injustice suffered, often unnoticed, by victims of crime by U.S. soldiers overseas, where they enjoy legal immunity.

After all these years of unrewarded effort, many people would have given up Castillo's fight as futile. But Castillo continues her battle, desperately seeking assistance of some international agency.

"Only when I know that (the soldiers) are in prison will I rest," she vows.

U.S. soldier's immunity clouds 2007 Colombian rape case (McClatchy News Service)

Investigan a dos militares de E.U. por violación de niña de 12 años en Comando Aéreo de Melgar (El Tiempo)

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours