* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Everything from poor record-keeping to macho attitudes among police stand in the way for many rape victims
By Tim Large
PORT-AU-PRINCE (TrustLaw) - In Courtroom No. 3, the prosecutor strained to make himself heard over the rattle of the air conditioner. He repeated his sum-up slowly as the scribe wrote in a notebook. The lead defence lawyer scoffed and the judge admonished him by tingling a little bell.
At the back of the room, the accused sat blankly. A young man in his late teens, he'd have understood more if the language of the court was Creole and not French.
He'd been awaiting this day for three years, all of them spent in an overcrowded prison, since the girl he claimed was his girlfriend filed a charge of rape.
The law is the law, said the prosecutor. The girl was 17 at the time of the alleged crime. Even though she and her father had subsequently withdrawn the charges, the wheels of Haitian justice could not be stopped.
Then it was time for the first defence lawyer to speak.
The case is a travesty, she said. The girl herself admitted it was the ninth time they had slept together. It was only after her brother caught them in her father's bed while the old man was at work that she cried rape. What is more precious to a Haitian girl than her honour? You can see why she felt she had to press charges...
Now the lead defence lawyer took to the floor -- in his crumpled robe, histrionic in his gestures. He held up a scrap of paper with scribbles on it: the medical certificate.
"Ah, the medical certificate!" he shouted. But not the medical certificate. A mere handwritten copy! The original was lost in the earthquake last year. And as everyone knows, it's not admissible if it's not the original.
And what does this worthless piece of paper say? Yes, there was intercourse. But were there bruises? Were there signs of violence? "No signs of violence," it says. "No signs of violence!"
Such was the scene at a recent trial at the new headquarters of the Prosecutor's Office of Port-au-Prince.
Many of the details were familiar features of the Haitian justice system: the hand-written record-keeping; the linguistic difficulties for non-French speakers; the lengthy detainment before trial; and the importance accorded to original copies of medical certificates in rape cases.
Even so, this was not a typical case.
Lest you think Haitian justice is rigorous to a fault in its pursuit of rapists, bear in mind that only a fraction of reported cases of sexual violence lead to prosecutions. And rights activists say only a fraction of rapes are reported.
Rape has long been a scourge in Haiti -- a political weapon in times of upheaval and only criminalised in 2005. Before that it was merely a crime against honour.
But rights groups say levels of sexual violence have reached epidemic proportions following the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which left more than a million people living in "tent cities" with little security for women and girls.
Lighting, police patrols and facilities for private bathing are almost non-existent, as are safe houses for those fearing reprisals from attackers if they go to the police. For a full picture of the scale of the problem, see Rape in the Camps: Sexual violence in Haiti after the quake.
Many of these issues came to the fore at a forum held in Port-au-Prince by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
It was the first time representatives from grassroots women's groups had sat around the table with senior officials from the women's ministry, justice ministry, police and prosecutor's office. Human rights lawyers and doctors also shared frank views.
The goals of the forum -- to help various actors coordinate efforts to find justice for rape survivors -- got backing from both Haitian President-elect Michel Martelly and the head of the majority party in parliament, Joseph Lambert.
"It is our will and our mission to change all this, to make sure the rule of law reigns in Haiti, that justice is for everybody, that the police do their job," Martelly said in a meeting with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The problem is very serious and I don't underestimate the problem of sexual violence."
As participants at the forum made clear, the obstacles to justice for rape survivors are legion.
Rights groups say many police fail to treat rape as a crime and often assume the women brought it on themselves, for example by dressing provocatively. Human rights lawyers say corruption is rife, with families of the accused often paying judges to dismiss rape cases.
And the cards are stacked against rape survivors due to the difficulties involved in getting medical certificates showing evidence they have been raped. The health ministry only authorises certain big hospitals to issue the documents, and they must be issued within three days of the alleged crime.
That's an obvious problem for women in rural areas. And that's assuming women even know the processes involved in getting the certificates. What's more, a great many documents were lost in the earthquake.
Back at Courthouse No. 3, the defence put technicalities about the medical certificate at the centre of its case, rather than the fact that the girl had withdrawn her charges or that it was only after being caught by a family member that she claimed she was raped.
And lawyers say a great many other cases with clear-cut evidence of coercion and violence fall apart on technicalities surrounding the documents.
Participants at the forum agreed on a number of urgently needed steps to tackle the problem.
These included a change in the rules so that any doctor in any hospital can issue the certificates as well as information campaigns explaining how women and girls can go about getting them, and crucially, how doctors can fill them out properly.
They agreed that judges and lawyers also needed to be better informed about issues surrounding sexual violence. Many judges, for example, assume that if a woman was not a virgin before she was raped, then she must have been asking for it.
Many also assume that no violence means no rape, failing to recognise that not all forms of coercion leave physical scars and bruises.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
