AP Exclusive – More than 100 UN peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti
April 12, 2017
PORT-AU-PRINCE—In the ruins of a tropical hideaway where jetsetters once sipped rum under the Caribbean sun, the abandoned children tried to make a life for themselves. They begged and scavenged for food, but they never could scrape together enough to beat back the hunger, until the UN peacekeepers moved in a few blocks away.
The men who came from a faraway place and spoke a strange language offered the Haitian children cookies and other snacks. Sometimes they gave them a few dollars. But the price was high: The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as 12.
“I did not even have breasts,” said a girl, known as V01 — Victim No. 1. She told UN investigators that over the next three years, from ages 12 to 15, she had sex with nearly 50 peacekeepers, including a “Commandant” who gave her 75 cents. Sometimes she slept in UN trucks on the base next to the decaying resort, whose once-glamorous buildings were being overtaken by jungle. Read More >>
Haiti Gunmen Open Fire on Crowd; 5 Dead
March 7, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Gunmen opened fired Sunday on thousands of unarmed demonstrators calling for the prosecution of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, killing four protesters and a foreign journalist in the worst attack since the Haitian president’s fall.
U.S. Marines returned fire – the first known armed action by U.S. forces sent to stabilize the country – but angry survivors accused the Marines and their French colleagues of not doing enough to prevent the attack.
Blood slicked the floors of a private hospital where victims were rushed. Women screamed and men cried as the few doctors tried to treat the injured with little medication. Read more >>