Boys forced into gangs, girls face sexual abuse as Haiti violence robs childhoods

Amna Nawaz:

Now we return to the chaos in Haiti.

Earlier this week, we looked at the gang warfare ravaging the nation, where more than 700,000 people, more than half children, have been displaced by street warfare. Tonight, we look at the plights of those children and more.

The fighting has sent poverty and hunger skyrocketing. Children are caught between the gangs and their tenuous futures.

Special correspondent Marcia Biggs and videographer Eric O'Connor report from the capital, Port-au-Prince.

And a warning:

Accounts of abuse and sexual violence in this story may disturb viewers.

Marcia Biggs:

A typical morning scene in Haiti, children going to school, their uniforms ironed, hair tied in cheerful bows. But this is also an image that is often seen on social media, gangs taking over areas with what look to be children in their ranks.

This is an area at the beginning of the Champ de Mars which sees fighting almost daily, and it can break out at any time. There used to be kids at this intersection, begging, washing windows. Now they have disappeared, leading some to wonder where they have all gone.

Jean Rebel Dorcena, National Commission for Disarmament, Dismantling and Reintegration (through interpreter): The children don't have anyone looking after them. They're in the street. When they're starving, they go to the gangs' bases. The gangs give them food and afterwards the kids become informants.

Marcia Biggs:

Jean Rebel Dorcena is a member of the National Commission of Disarmament, Dismantlement and Reintegration. Among other things, it works to create a dialogue between the state and armed groups.

He referred us to this video, the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang handing out what equates to almost 200 U.S. dollars to young children.

"The state should be taking care of these kids, not me. If they don't," he taunts, "they will all be gang members."

Jean Rebel Dorcena (through interpreter):

These kids don't go to school. Who do they have as a role model? Guys with guns. When they go on social media, they see the men with guns have the upper hand over the state, because the state is weak.

Marcia Biggs:

According to the U.N., 30 to 50 percent of armed group members are children, often used as informants or to do odd jobs in exchange for protection or money to support their families.

One of those boys is this 14-year-old, whose identity we are protecting.

Boy (through interpreter):

I am used to seeing people hurting other people, killing people right in front of me. It happens near my home.

Marcia Biggs:

He lives in an area held by the 5 Second gang, which uses social media posts like these to recruit children as young as 10.

Boy (through interpreter):

It makes me so scared. I tell my mother I want to leave the neighborhood, but she has no money, so we have to stay.

Marcia Biggs:

The boy tells us about the day he was pulled into a car and promised food in exchange for his work as an informant on members of a rival gang.

Boy (through interpreter):

The man said: "I'm giving you a walkie-talkie." I started to cry and he forced me to take it. He said: "If you don't take it, I will shoot you."

Marcia Biggs:

For a week, he says, he worked for the gang until his mother found him and convinced the leader of the gang to let her take him home.

Woman (through interpreter):

When I arrived there, he just hugged me. He hugged me. I have absolutely no support. I have no help. I have no one to call. I only have God in heaven.

Marcia Biggs:

Her son claims that he's determined to stay away from the gang.

Boy (through interpreter):

I don't want to be the one who will make my family ashamed. I don't have thieves in my family. I don't have family members who are in gangs. I don't like when people are violent to other people. I have to go to school so that I can learn to build something for tomorrow. It's the best thing for me now.

Marcia Biggs:

His mother said he did well in school, but recently he stopped going because they couldn't afford it. Now he has little to distract him from the lure of the gang.

Woman (through interpreter):

He's not a violent kid. But he's a kid with bad friends who can influence him. When a child spends his days at home, he has nothing to do. He walks around the neighborhood. He hangs out with his friends. If he were in school, he would come back home and study.

Marcia Biggs:

Dorcena believes the fate of these children should be an urgent priority of the state.

Jean Rebel Dorcena (through interpreter):

These kids are the future of the country. If they let children cross to the other side, what do you think is going to happen? In 20 years, things will be worse than they are now.

Marcia Biggs:

He says he has proposed solutions, but so far has received no response from the government.

In the absence of the state, it is the small organizations that have had to step up. Lamercie Charles Pierre Fontaine is a psychologist and the general coordinator at OFAVA, an organization that, with the help of UNICEF, takes in young girls who've been victimized by gangs.

Lamercie Charles Pierre Fontaine, General Coordinator, OFAVA (through interpreter):

The majority of girls who have survived sexual violence, they were kidnapped. Then they were beaten, detained and raped.

Marianne, Victim of Gang Violence (through interpreter): They came into our house. They took my father. They held him. And they took me together with my stepmother. They beat us. They raped us. Then they killed my father in front of us. They shot him. Then they burned him with the house.

Marcia Biggs:

Marianne, not her real name, says the horror, didn't end there.

Marianne (through interpreter):

They blindfolded us. They put me in a very dirty place full of garbage that smelled terrible. I saw six young girls like me. They had tied them to a chair. They did the same to me. They abused us sexually every day.

Marcia Biggs:

After seven days, she and some of the other girls escaped while the men were out fighting. Lamercie eventually found her and brought her here to the OFAVA house, where she was able to find community with other girls in her same situation.

For the first week, she didn't speak and barely ate.

Marianne (through interpreter):

I was traumatized. I felt like I was living in hell on Earth. I felt like my life was over. Sometimes, I want to commit suicide. I want to go far, far, far away.

Marcia Biggs:

She says working with a psychologist at OFAVA has helped her begin to heal.

Marianne (through interpreter):

They give us therapy that helps us understand that, despite what has happened to us, life isn't over. We must have a lot of courage. We are brave women. We are supposed to overcome this.

Marcia Biggs:

Lamercie says a quarter of the girls who come to her are pregnant. We sat down with another 14-year-old girl who didn't feel comfortable with a formal interview.

Gang members kidnapped her last year and, for 40 days, different men took turns raping her. They burned her arms for fun. She finally escaped. And by the time she arrived at OFAVA, she was three months pregnant. Her daughter, Fatima, was born in February.

"I should be in school," she told us, through tears. "I shouldn't be carrying a baby." She talks about killing herself. "The burn scars are getting better," she told us. "But what's inside me, you cannot see. I'm carrying everything that's happened to me and those things will never leave me."

Lamercie Charles Pierre Fontaine (through interpreter):

The majority of these girls, even after six months, need major in-depth psychological support. And it's happening every day. Sexual violence against women and girls in Haiti remains a major challenge, and day by day the number of cases of violence is increasing.

For young girls, it used to be 10, 15. Now it's risen to almost 50 percent.

Marcia Biggs:

Do you think that this is the biggest problem in Haiti today?

Lamercie Charles Pierre Fontaine (through interpreter):

Yes, for me. The problem is lack of security. The majority of the rapists are bandits, members of armed gangs. The lack of security has increased the cases of rape all over Port-au-Prince.

Marcia Biggs:

As gangs continue to hold the upper hand, Lamercie says she doesn't have the resources to meet the needs.

Lamercie Charles Pierre Fontaine (through interpreter):

I received so many calls this week about taking in some girls, but, unfortunately, I just don't have room.

To provide mental health care for survivors, we need psychologists and social workers, but we cannot afford to pay them.

Marcia Biggs:

But for those she can help, there is hope for a brighter future. Considering her ordeal, Marianne is thriving. She told us: "I have found a new home and a new mother who loves me a lot."

She wants to continue school so that she can become a psychologist and help other girls the way she has been helped.

Marianne (through interpreter):

Everything they have said to me has given me the courage to fight for my education, to fight for my life, and for all the things my parents wanted for me, so that, even though they are not here, I can still make them happy.

Marcia Biggs:

But as the violence rages on, there are so many more children who have not found their way home and are still trapped in a world of violence and abuse.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Marcia Biggs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.