Last updated on May 12, 2011
This morning’s New York Times had a front-page article on the incidence of rape in the Peace Corps, and on how many Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) who report being victims of rape every year:
“But from 2000 to 2009, on average, 22 Peace Corps women each year reported being the victims of rape or attempted rape, the agency says. During that time, more than 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers reported sexual assaults, including 221 rapes or attempted rapes. Because sexual crimes often go unreported, experts say the incidence is likely to be higher, though they and the Peace Corps add that it is difficult to assess whether the volunteers face any greater risk overseas than women in the United States do.”
Those are very disturbing numbers, but what is perhaps more disturbing is how PCVs who report these sexual crimes seem to be treated once they return:
“Jess Smochek arrived in Bangladesh in 2004 as a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer with dreams of teaching English and ‘helping the world.’ She left six weeks later a rape victim after being brutalized in an alley by a knife-wielding gang.
When she returned to the United States, the reception she received from Peace Corps officials was as devastating, she said, as the rape itself. In Bangladesh, she had been given scant medical care; in Washington, a counselor implied that she was to blame for the attack.”
EDIT: Saundra Schimmelpfennig over at Good Intentions Are Not Enough, who discusses her own experience in the comments below, has a post on her blog describing her own experience.