| “I was caught with my parents,” she explains. “I was so young I can’t remember my age. My parents were killed and I was taken away and gang-raped. The men who took me threatened to kill me if I left and forced me to carry a gun. This went on for three years.”
Helen, who was no more than 11 or 12 at the time of the attack, was given cocaine to eat to desensitize her to the horrors she was about to live through.
She remembers: “I was given drugs so I never valued human beings; they were just like chickens running around. Even when I was killing people I didn’t realise what I was doing. I remember one woman, who lived quite near here. I shot her but she took a long time to die. I still think about it.”
Child soldiers
During the ten-year civil war that raged throughout Sierra Leone, tens of thousands of children were forced to join fighting factions. The legacy of this systematic recruitment is a generation of young people who have both seen and committed unthinkable atrocities.
For Helen, scarred by her experiences and with no education or skills to earn a living, the future looked bleak.
“After the war ended I had nobody to care for me. When I was with the rebels, I gave birth to a baby and I had to make ends meet. I was doing commercial sex work to survive.”
Helping war-affected children
Helen’s story is tragically all too familiar to the Red Cross staff and volunteers at the child advocacy and rehabilitation (CAR) centre in Kailahun. The first CAR centre was established in 2001 and there are now four centres around the country, helping 150 war-affected children each year by providing psychosocial support and skills training.
Once the CAR youth graduate, they receive a start-up kit of essential equipment and tools to do their trade and staff help them find apprenticeships. It has offered Helen an apprenticeship as a tailor and given her the hope that one day she may be able to lead an independent life.
“I’ve been doing tailoring for six months and will graduate in February,” she says. Now I am thinking of going back to school. It’s not easy to start out on your own. I would like to be independent by next year, though.”
Offering a lifeline
By October 2008, more than 3,000 children had graduated from the programme yet, according to Red Cross staff and volunteers, the centres remain massively oversubscribed. For children like Helen they offer a lifeline, not only giving children the chance to gain employable skills, but also providing them with desperately needed counseling and support.
“With the CAR programme I am finally happy. I can’t think about the rebels but I have had counselling at the CAR centre and the best thing to come out of it is my change in attitude. Before I had fear but now I have confidence.”
*Name has been changed
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