Sylvia's underlying personality did not make things easier. "She was a very unhappy little baby, and I felt such guilt," Ashley said. "I was afraid to even bathe her, like her genital area. I was afraid I would do something because of the abuse I'd grown up with. She threw tantrums and pulled my hair out; she bloodied my nose one time. I got her a kitten when she was two. She would take that cat by the back legs and throw it on the couch, and she would sit on it and pull its whiskers out. I don't know if it's the violence that she's seen, the violence that's happening to her ongoing, what happened while she was still inside me and I was getting beat up, or if she was just born like him."

Ashley felt powerless. "When she was five, I was bathing her one day in the tub with me, and she told me that her dad and her did the same thing. I called a therapist, and she said, 'Don't ask her any more questions. Just bring her in.' It was worse than I had thought. The psychologist said that he was not only bathing with her, but he was having her wash his genitals, and doing things around her private area." Ashley filed for a protective order; Martin brought a countersuit seeking exclusive custody on grounds that Ashley was lying. Ashley had a clean record; Martin had previous convictions for drug possession and for beating Ashley and had been put in court-ordered therapy for violence. In the Alabama courts, however, he won. After the ruling, Ashley attempted suicide. Sylvia later complained to Ashley that Martin had walked in on her naked, climbed in the shower with her, hit her, and denied her food and medical care. Ashley returned to court and sued for custody again, appearing before the same judge. "I had tape-recorded phone conversations of her telling me about all this abuse, but he didn't allow me to play them. Instead, he ordered I would have to pay all of my husband's legal bills, fourteen thousand dollars. Now I'm terrified they're going to put me in jail."

She finally gave up on her daughter. "It's just too much trauma," Ashley said. "It's not that I don't love her. It's not that I don't want her to be free from that. It's that for whatever reason, God has seen fit for her to be there. God has seen fit for us not to have a relationship. And I've done everything I can do." her to be there. God has seen fit for us not to have a relationship. And I've done everything I can do."

At twenty-six, Ashley decided to go to college. She graduated with a 3.8 average and became a qualified community counselor. Like Marina James, Brenda Henriques, Lisa Boynton, and Tina Gordon, Ashley has helped herself by helping others-but she has worked with offenders, not just with victims. "Most of them, the higher-functioning ones, were very socially skilled. They seemed like the nicest people you could ever meet, some of them; they're very socially skilled and they make people very comfortable, and that's how they accomplish what they do and that's how they keep their victims quiet. So, I learned a great deal when I was there and did a lot of healing of my own, and I think helped other people heal, offenders heal."

Eventually she met a man with whom she bore another daughter, in a "consensual, child-wanting, of-age, in-love relationship." Alicia was born with profound hearing loss in her left ear; her acquisition of speech was delayed and her articulation poor. After she was diagnosed with other delays, her father left, unable to cope. "She's a special-needs child, and that can be very trying at times, but I have very different feelings for Alicia versus Sylvia," Ashley said. "I think she's the reason I graduated with my bachelor's-and the reason I lived." Still, the shadow of Sylvia's deterioration loomed, especially when Alicia reached the age at which Sylvia had been taken away from her mother. "I looked at her last night. She was sleeping. And she looked a little bit like Sylvia, and I had to turn my head because I'm afraid she's going to die or I'm going to lose custody of her. I think this is the time to talk about statutory rape and how damaging it is: the injustice of having a child with an adult more than twice my age. I know that probably doesn't sound as serious as some stranger holding you down and forcibly raping you, but it has been for me and for our child, who will never be okay."

Statutory rape is a category that has often been abused. Someone I interviewed was arrested when he was found having sex with his girlfriend, who was six months younger than he, an underage seventeen to his legally adult eighteen, even though his girlfriend's parents approved of the relationship. The principle that no one over the age of eighteen should ever be allowed to have carnal relations with anyone under the age of eighteen can be hard to defend in such circumstances. It is nonetheless evident that in many situations statutory rape is rape. The influence men such as Martin can have over young girls who have been neglected or ill-treated by their own parents is difficult to exaggerate.

At fourteen, Sylvia appeared destroyed by her young lifetime of abuse. "She dresses like a boy," Ashley said. "You can't really tell that she's a girl. She's filthy and she smells horrible. She has psychotic-type symptoms." Talking about it, Ashley began to cry, then to stutter. Apologizing, she said, "The last visit I had with her, she told me she heard voices. One of the things that she talked about was her dad would come while she was changing clothes or showering, which is why now she doesn't shower and doesn't change her clothes." she's a girl. She's filthy and she smells horrible. She has psychotic-type symptoms." Talking about it, Ashley began to cry, then to stutter. Apologizing, she said, "The last visit I had with her, she told me she heard voices. One of the things that she talked about was her dad would come while she was changing clothes or showering, which is why now she doesn't shower and doesn't change her clothes."

Ashley is unable to work because she is taking care of Alicia full-time; she lives on less than $300 a month in an income-based apartment. Although she no longer sees Sylvia, she still pays child support to her onetime rapist out of the child support that she gets for Alicia. She has taken down all the pictures of Sylvia. "I have physical scars on my body from his abuse of me," Ashley said. "He's made her into another scar. I can't even stand to look at her. I would welcome her with open arms, I would go to therapy with her, but I would probably not let her in my home. I would be afraid she would abuse Alicia. I wish I had never had her. If I could go back, I would have aborted or I would have given her up for adoption. It hasn't been fair to me and it hasn't been fair to her."

A recent study has identified "coerced childbearing as a weapon in the arsenal of power and control." Numerous women who have been raped within relationships speak of the rape as a means used by a man to keep her under his thumb, the classic ploy of domination by keeping a wife "barefoot and pregnant." Women in surveys have variously said, "He raped me to keep me pregnant all the time because he knew I would never leave the kids," and "They own you when you have a child by him-part of the purpose in having a baby is to control you." As the mothers' children bear witness to ongoing sexual violence, they are more likely to be traumatized, and to be both victims of and perpetrators of sexual abuse themselves.

Although no one ever deserves to be raped, a woman's actions can have an enormous impact on her own safety. Yet some women repeatedly put themselves in situations of extreme vulnerability. Most of us anticipate bad things that could happen, but some are capable of reacting only to events that have already occurred. Talking to many women who had borne children of rape, I was struck by their inability to foresee the likelihood of danger inherent in their choices. Every bad thing that befell them, even at the hands of previous aggressors, came as a surprise. They could not tell the difference between people who warranted trust and those who didn't. They lacked guiding intuition and were blind to bad character until it manifested itself.

Nearly all such women I met had not been cherished or protected as children. At the most basic level, they did not know what caring behavior felt like, so they were unable to recognize it. Some were desperate for love and attention, which made them easy targets. Most were so familiar with neglect or abuse that they accepted it when it came their way; for many, abuse was synonymous with intimacy. Some who actively strove to improve their situation found themselves merely repeating their past; they kept falling back into the familiar muck. children. At the most basic level, they did not know what caring behavior felt like, so they were unable to recognize it. Some were desperate for love and attention, which made them easy targets. Most were so familiar with neglect or abuse that they accepted it when it came their way; for many, abuse was synonymous with intimacy. Some who actively strove to improve their situation found themselves merely repeating their past; they kept falling back into the familiar muck.

It is difficult to imagine who Mindy Woods might be if her uncle had not started molesting her when she was ten. He lived next door in their small town in the Midwest. He molested her older sister for nine years, and Mindy every week or so for seven, sometimes while his own young daughters were in the room. He started in with their cousin when she was a small child, but she put a stop to it at thirteen, when she filed a police report. A detective came over to interview Mindy, but she clammed up. Her uncle negotiated a plea bargain, resulting in nothing more than community service and a fine. "My grandma saw it," Mindy recalled, "and she just used to call my sister and me sluts-ten-year-old sluts, quite a concept." In pictures of Mindy from third grade, she's a little slip of a girl. The next year, after the abuse began, she was twice as heavy, and by her senior year of high school, she weighed 275 pounds.

Mindy went off to college, but came home after three months. At twenty-one, she married "the first guy that ever let me cry all night and just held me." She tried to have children but was unable to conceive and could not find sexual satisfaction in her marriage. She divorced at twenty-five and traveled around the country with a truck driver she met on the Internet, eventually getting a trucker's license herself. Seeking to be subjugated by powerful "masters," she entered into the world of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadomasochism). "My uncle made me that way. He molded me sexually," she said. "I don't think it's wanting to be a victim again. I think it's more analyzing. I want to figure out what I was feeling, what was going through my mind, and why the hell I let him do it."

BDSM relationships are supposed to be guided by mutuality; the slave consents to be led by her master, who putatively treats her with respect even as he commands her behavior. Seeking such a master, Mindy met a man from Michigan online; he turned out to be a psychopath. "You can be somebody who punishes somebody, who sets down rules and expects you to obey them, and still be a loving person," Mindy said. "There's a difference between punishment and abuse. A master is supposed to have love and respect for the submissive. It's called a gift of submission." The Michigander had erectile dysfunction owing to diabetes and never had intercourse with her; instead he raped her with objects, including a broomstick. He kept her locked in the house and told her that the neighbors were paid to call him if she tried to leave. It took her three months to escape. She was able to get online long enough to find "a place set up to rescue submissives who needed help," and the people there took her to a safe house. owing to diabetes and never had intercourse with her; instead he raped her with objects, including a broomstick. He kept her locked in the house and told her that the neighbors were paid to call him if she tried to leave. It took her three months to escape. She was able to get online long enough to find "a place set up to rescue submissives who needed help," and the people there took her to a safe house.

When she left the safe house, she went to stay with a friend, Mamie, who was getting ready to be married and had asked Mindy to be her maid of honor. Mamie was pregnant and living with her fiance, who was flirtatious in what Mindy took to be a friendly way. "It was in front of his wife-to-be, and she laughed," Mindy said, "so I thought it was okay." Mindy came down with a bad flu shortly after she arrived and started taking codeine cough syrup. She woke one night, groggy and confused, to find Mamie's fiance having sex with her, whispering in her ear that he was going to make her pregnant. "I thought it was some weird nightmare from the codeine," she said. Mindy had learned with her uncle how to pretend that sexual assaults were not happening, and she woke up the next day and went about her business as usual. The second time, he put a pillow over her face to prevent her from crying out. The third time, Mamie walked in just as he was finishing up, and her fiance said that he had been giving Mindy a massage for her back problems. Mindy remained mute and submissive. "I was just so afraid," Mindy said. "He knew I was extremely vulnerable and he knew that I didn't prosecute my uncle, that I didn't prosecute the idiot in Michigan-he knew my history of just letting things drop." Mindy stayed on at the house and was maid of honor at the wedding.

When she got home, Mindy went to her gynecologist and said she had been raped. She found out that she was pregnant. "I didn't have the money to get an abortion myself," she said. "I knew my parents would have shunned me if they'd found out. My mom is a born-again Christian. So if I still wanted to be in the family, I needed to keep the kid." Mindy went into a severe depression, and the fibromyalgia from which she had long suffered began to escalate, putting her in constant pain. "If I had not been pregnant, I probably would have killed myself," she recalled. "I've thought about suicide my whole life, ever since my uncle."

When she was four months along, Mindy met Larry Foster, and she was still with him four years later when I was introduced to her. "He knew everything before he decided to move in with me," Mindy told me. He was in the delivery room when she gave birth to Gretel and put his name on her birth certificate. Mindy was relieved when she had a girl. "I haven't had very good luck with males," she said. Mindy, who weighs over three hundred pounds, wears both the collar of her submission to Larry and a pentacle that signifies her Wiccan belief system. "I'm not Miss Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart or a neat freak who bakes and has dresses, like his mom and grandma, but they're relatively accepting," she said. Still, she feels unequal to motherhood. "Part of being a mom is actually exerting a little authority over a kid. I'm submissive. I have no authority." weighs over three hundred pounds, wears both the collar of her submission to Larry and a pentacle that signifies her Wiccan belief system. "I'm not Miss Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart or a neat freak who bakes and has dresses, like his mom and grandma, but they're relatively accepting," she said. Still, she feels unequal to motherhood. "Part of being a mom is actually exerting a little authority over a kid. I'm submissive. I have no authority."

Having your mother in a dog collar, obeying orders, does not necessarily help build a little girl's self-esteem. Mindy sometimes calls Larry "Master" around the house. Gretel calls him "Daddy." "I would get upset with her if she called him Larry, just the same as I would get upset with her if she called him Master, and to me that's just a normal parent thing," Mindy said. She thinks she will eventually have to tell Gretel about her biological father, "but for now, I want her to just know Larry as Daddy."

Mindy takes medication for depression, diabetes, and fibromyalgia. "It's hard for me sometimes to get my mind clear enough to form a sentence," she said. "There are times I can't pick Gretel up. I'll sit down and she'll crawl up in my lap, but if she starts squirming around, I can't take it. That's driving a wedge between her and me." The relationship with Gretel has some of the same quality of resignation that typifies Mindy's submissive relationships with men. "She is a constant reminder," Mindy said. "She's annoying, but what three-year-old isn't? There have been a lot of times that I've wanted to drop her off at a street corner somewhere and leave. I want to blame the fact that I don't have a life on her. Then I think about it, and I do have a life. My life is her. And once I get into that mentality, I love her to death." Then, in the next breath, Mindy added, "I still wish I'd miscarried and didn't have her."

Mindy writes poetry and fiction based in the BDSM world, almost all of it about young girls being brutally ravaged by older men. For Mindy Woods, there is always something beautiful in ruthlessness-it repels and compels her and she writes of cruelty with hapless pleasure. "I even cry about some of the stuff I write," Mindy said. It's hard not to see elements of both Mindy and Gretel in the little girls who are tortured in these stories, hard not to see Mindy's anger and ambivalence toward her daughter as anger at her own young self that allowed the original abuse.

Mindy inhabits a world where choice and helplessness are impossibly blurred. Many of the women I interviewed who were raising children born as a result of rape have emerged from trauma into at least superficially ordinary lives. Others, such as Mindy, remain at the outer margins. Mindy represents the weirdness into which a woman can descend after childhood sexual abuse. Some women are damaged in ways that make them deeply alien. They manifest their scars by vanishing into netherworlds as sordid and disturbing as the events they have survived. Damage has lasting consequences. margins. Mindy represents the weirdness into which a woman can descend after childhood sexual abuse. Some women are damaged in ways that make them deeply alien. They manifest their scars by vanishing into netherworlds as sordid and disturbing as the events they have survived. Damage has lasting consequences.

Many parents and children I met who had coped with the obstacles associated with exceptional differences wanted to affirm their positive experiences and stand as models for others. Many had emerged from difficulty as better people and were eager to share their triumphs. By contrast, the mothers of children conceived in rape sought validation. Even if they had built fulfilling parental bonds, their child's identity had not transformed them. Most children of rape know that; they sense the festering penumbra of loss that shrouds them even before they slip into the world. Someone who does not share the defining condition might disavow the stigma attached to deafness or dwarfism without compunction, but it is almost inconceivable not to be repulsed by rape, and that taint haunts raped women and their rape-conceived children. Who, in this age of genetic determinism, could announce that his father was a rapist and not expect some degree of disquiet to ensue?

Even if being a child of rape may never become a celebrated identity, it may become a more socially accepted one, thanks to the improved educational, legal, and psychological handling of rape in recent decades. The less forbidden a topic rape is and the more easily its survivors can reach one another, the greater the likelihood that mothers and children will find the horizontal communities they need. Even without such support, some women manage to harness their trauma to good parenting-and a few even believe that reckoning with shocking violence has made them better parents than any less fearful history would have done.

Barbara Schmitz grew up on a farm in northern Nebraska in the 1970s. "My main memories of my childhood are being afraid and being very, very lonely," she said. Her brother, Jim, and sister, Elaine, were five and seven years older, respectively, and her school had only ten students, just one of them her age. Her mother was violent and unpredictable. "She used to beat Jim with a wooden hanger, and I'd be down at the end of the hallway, feeling helpless. When I got to the age where I could outrun her, she would torture my dog and cat in front of me to make me come back, because she knew that I would rather be beaten myself than have my animals hurt. Even my animals that I loved were used against me."

Her father was sexually abusive. She remembers his exposing his erect penis to her; other memories are hazier and more sinister. Once Elaine and Jim started high school, she and her father were often alone at home in the afternoons. "My dad had a room in the basement with this creaky, old cot, and I have memories of lying on that cot, knowing the door was locked, and my dad being there. There was a window above my head, and I would picture myself turning into a white bird and flying out through that window." Her vaginal area was chronically inflamed, and her mother told her to put Chap Stick on it. When Barbara was thirteen, her mother got her a spaghetti-strap dress for a wedding, and Barbara had put it on and was sitting on the kitchen counter, talking to her mother. "My dad got up and went into the bathroom down the hall, and when I looked, he was standing there with an erection. I turned to my mom, and she said, 'Cover yourself up.' So my mom knew."

Barbara recalled getting a particularly bad beating from her mother when she was nine or ten. "I was down on the floor, and she had these orthopedic shoes, and she was kicking my head. I bit her ankle and went running down to the basement, 'cause I knew where my dad kept the pistol. And she came after me. She had fists and this rage on her face. And then she saw the gun, and her face just went from rage to fear. I remember saying, 'If you come one step closer, I will shoot you.' She turned around and went back upstairs." After her mother would beat Barbara, she would make brownies. "That was her way of apologizing," Barbara remembered. "And if I didn't eat them, that meant that I didn't love her. So I got fat. Elaine is very pretty and thin and always had the new clothes, and I was always wearing the hand-me-downs. My mom dressed her up and let her be a cheerleader and in Girl Scouts. But Elaine was nice to me; the few times I remember being tucked into bed and hugged, it was Elaine who did it."

Barbara's best friend was her border collie, Pumpkin. Her father would make her beat the animal with a whip, and when Pumpkin had puppies, when Barbara was nine, he put them in a gunnysack with a brick and threw them in the creek. Barbara used to climb the hill behind the house and seek out tranquillity and peace. "I would talk to God a lot," she recalled. "I'd be like, 'Why are you letting this happen to me?' I was pissed at Him for a long time."

She remembers herself as "a mean little kid" who would cut off her dolls' heads and kick her older sister for no reason. "It was okay to be angry in my family. It was not okay to cry." When she started to weep after spraining her ankle as a teenager, her father slapped her repeatedly, telling her to shut up. Barbara longed for approval. "You know how a dog would rather be beaten, just to get attention that way, than be ignored?" So she started lifting fifty-pound bags of seed corn and doing other heavy farm chores; by way of reward, her father taught her how to play poker and how to fish. how a dog would rather be beaten, just to get attention that way, than be ignored?" So she started lifting fifty-pound bags of seed corn and doing other heavy farm chores; by way of reward, her father taught her how to play poker and how to fish.

Barbara finally escaped by going to college in Lincoln. During rush week for fraternity and sorority candidates, Barbara went to a big party, and a guy who seemed nice invited her over to see his frat house. He got her drunk on beer. "The next thing I remember, I was on the bed and being raped," she said. "I remember screaming, 'No!' and trying to fight. But I was still very drunk, and he was very strong. I still had my hymen, so there was lots of blood." As soon as he got off her, she crawled into the bathroom and locked the door; when she came out, he handed her $5. Back at her dorm, she took a three-hour hot shower and then stayed in bed for two days.

In the aftermath, her new life at college quickly began to fall apart. She became bulimic, using food to stifle her pain, just as she had been taught to do as a child. She began binge drinking and stopped going to classes. A few months later, she met Jeffrey, a friend of her roommate's boyfriend. "Our relationship very quickly became about sex," she said. "It was not tender or emotional or even pleasurable for me." But it did help her begin to function again, and she and Jeffrey graduated together. "It was like, 'Okay, what do you want to do now?'" So they got married. "I chose Jeffrey because he was emotionally distant," she said.

They moved to Omaha and threw themselves into their careers; Barbara worked seventy-five hours a week. "It was a great way to avoid going home, because there was nothing to go home for," she said. She told her doctor that her energy was flagging, and he prescribed an antidepressant. It helped her be more engaged and energetic, but she resumed binge drinking, which dulled her intense anxiety. Even though she was terrified of intimacy, she was also starved for affection, so she started casting about extramaritally. She met someone in an online sex chat room who was a born-again Christian. "He talked so much about love, and things that were very new to me," she recalled. "He opened the door for me to accepting Christ-which is odd, from a sex chat room. After that, there was always the sense that God was there somewhere." One evening, she went into the bathroom and started to cry. "I got down on my knees, and I said, 'Please, before I die, just let me know what real love is.'"

When Dan O'Brien came into her life not long afterward, she thought he was the answer to that prayer. She had a new job for a big agricultural corporation, running support for a sales team in the Pacific Northwest. She'd stay at work an extra hour to accommodate the time difference, and Dan, one of her long-distance clients, started calling her at the end of the day. He was fighting for custody of his three-year-old son and would send Barbara photos of the boy and ask for advice. "He was also asking me a lot of really personal questions. A lot of 'Why are you there so late? Why aren't you going home to your husband? Do you guys even sleep together anymore?'" Northwest. She'd stay at work an extra hour to accommodate the time difference, and Dan, one of her long-distance clients, started calling her at the end of the day. He was fighting for custody of his three-year-old son and would send Barbara photos of the boy and ask for advice. "He was also asking me a lot of really personal questions. A lot of 'Why are you there so late? Why aren't you going home to your husband? Do you guys even sleep together anymore?'"

Barbara thought she had finally found her prince. She told Jeffrey all about him, and while her husband resented the new attachment, by then they were living such separate lives that he couldn't exercise much authority. Barbara and Dan would talk to each other for hours every night. "Dan was basically my dad, all over again," Barbara said, "but Dan was telling me how smart I was and feeding my ego. He loved me; he wanted to marry me; he wanted to have children with me. He would have moved to Omaha, but he had a little boy, so I needed to move to California. Now, keep in mind: we had never met each other."

She finally told Jeffrey that she was going out West to see Dan, and Jeffrey drove her to the airport. "The reality, of course, could not live up to my huge fantasy," she recalled. "I felt very much out of place, almost like I was watching myself in this play." They slept together right off the bat, using condoms, and although she still found no pleasure in sex, everything was relatively normal until they had an argument. "He grabbed me and threw me down, literally ripped off my clothes, and was inside of me before I even realized what was going on. What he was doing hurt. Afterwards, he said, 'Didn't you like that?' and went into the living room to watch TV."

Barbara didn't initially admit to herself that she'd been raped, but she felt as though her world were dissolving around her. She called Jeffrey and said she was coming home. In Omaha, she tried to pretend that nothing had happened, but when she found out that she was pregnant, she called Dan and told him, still half thinking that they might embark on a new life together. He accused her of getting pregnant so he would marry her. She didn't seriously consider an abortion: "I didn't think the child was real enough to even consider an abortion." Instead, she simply told her husband, "We're pregnant." They hadn't had sex in months, but Jeffrey was in denial as much as she was, and he accepted the fiction.

Barbara's life became increasingly surreal. Dan threatened her because he was worried that she would hound him for child support. Jeffrey played the role of the dutiful expectant father, going to Lamaze class and getting her Arby's in the middle of the night when she craved potato cakes. "But there was no love there," Barbara recalled. "I was working during the day, going through the motions. At night, I was lying on the bathroom floor crying and asking God to kill me." She didn't fully register that she was going to have a baby until she was in the delivery room. "And when I saw Pauline, it was just like 'Holy shit, there's a baby!'" working during the day, going through the motions. At night, I was lying on the bathroom floor crying and asking God to kill me." She didn't fully register that she was going to have a baby until she was in the delivery room. "And when I saw Pauline, it was just like 'Holy shit, there's a baby!'"

Maternal feelings did not set in. Barbara breast-fed and took care of her daughter, but she did so without love. "She was adorable, but when I looked at her, I saw Dan. I just wanted to die." One of her friends, who worked in a therapist's office, recognized that Barbara was in terrible shape and made a counseling appointment on her behalf; Barbara didn't have the energy to say no. Three months into therapy, Barbara read a book about boundaries. "There I am, right on page eight. This woman in her thirties was talking about things that her father would do. Such as come into the bathroom when she was in there naked, or urinate in front of her. And it said that was 'covert sexual abuse.' My entire life, I sensed that there was something really wrong with me. I suddenly saw that it was something that was done to me, that I couldn't help, and that's why I'm this way. I went and woke up Jeffrey and had him read that. He looked right at me and said, 'I always knew something had to have happened.'"

Barbara and her therapist began to talk about Barbara's childhood, and then about Dan, and Barbara finally identified what had happened to her as rape. She finally started to feel angry at Dan, and the angrier she grew, the more fiercely she began to love Pauline. "I'd be nursing her, and I'd just cry because she'd come from this horrible thing, but she was just so beautiful." The next step was to admit Pauline's parentage to Jeffrey. Jeffrey replied, "There's a part of me that wants to kick you out and never see you again, but that's not what I really want. So let's work this out." They entered marriage counseling, and later, he started individual therapy. Once he understood on an intellectual level how the relationship with Dan could have happened, he made peace with it and took responsibility for his part in their hollow marriage.

Jeffrey admitted to me that the outcome would have been different if he'd known from the start it was Dan's baby. "But Pauline was six months old before I found out," Jeffrey said, "and I already loved her. She was mine, whatever the biology was, and I couldn't give her up. That helped me to see that I really loved Barbara, too." Barbara, in turn, watching him snuggling with Pauline, "started to see the truth about Jeffrey-that he was so much better than I'd known-and the truth about Dan, that he was so much worse."

Barbara's parents found out that Dan was Pauline's father because Dan had his girlfriend call them. At the farm for Christmas, Barbara and Jeffrey were sitting in the living room one night, holding Pauline, when Barbara's mother suddenly asked, "Was I good to you when you were growing up?" Barbara said, "No, you weren't." Her mother said, "I hit you once, and you deserved it." Then she told them to leave the farm and warned Barbara that if she ever returned she'd put a bullet through her head. A year later, Barbara's father sent her a card with a picture of her sitting on his lap. He wrote, "I'm really going to miss seeing Pauline grow up." Later, he called and said, "If you don't stop talking about how I sexually abused you, I'm going to kill you." But Barbara had already made the quiet passage to activism, which is incompatible with secrecy. She gave an interview to a local newspaper; she had her picture taken for inclusion in a project about women who have been raped and abused. Eventually, she testified in front of the Nebraska legislature and helped to get a law passed to abolish the statute of limitations for sex offenders. Dan had his girlfriend call them. At the farm for Christmas, Barbara and Jeffrey were sitting in the living room one night, holding Pauline, when Barbara's mother suddenly asked, "Was I good to you when you were growing up?" Barbara said, "No, you weren't." Her mother said, "I hit you once, and you deserved it." Then she told them to leave the farm and warned Barbara that if she ever returned she'd put a bullet through her head. A year later, Barbara's father sent her a card with a picture of her sitting on his lap. He wrote, "I'm really going to miss seeing Pauline grow up." Later, he called and said, "If you don't stop talking about how I sexually abused you, I'm going to kill you." But Barbara had already made the quiet passage to activism, which is incompatible with secrecy. She gave an interview to a local newspaper; she had her picture taken for inclusion in a project about women who have been raped and abused. Eventually, she testified in front of the Nebraska legislature and helped to get a law passed to abolish the statute of limitations for sex offenders.

When I visited Barbara and Jeffrey in Omaha, Pauline was six; she struck me as a cheerful little girl, easy to talk to, and cuddly with both parents. She wanted their attention, but seemed content to explore and return. "I never got the basics about love or even kindness," Barbara said. "It's like beginning a whole new language when you're forty: it's a lot harder than if you've heard people speaking it since you were a kid." She shuddered. "One time I gave her a hard swat, and the look on her face was devastating. That was enough to know, 'Okay, I'm never doing that again.' I don't want to turn into my parents."

Barbara has built a happy family on the ruins of a dysfunctional one. At the time of our initial conversation, she and Jeffrey had been married eighteen years. She was learning new social skills alongside her daughter. "I used to always wait for people to come up to me," she said. Then she started initiating contact, and teaching Pauline to do the same. "I'd say, 'What would be a good way to make a friend, do you think?' I'd take her to the park and practice. As we were parenting her, I was parenting myself. I had reached the point in my life where I had to start living as a real person, or I just didn't want to live. I mean, I gave Pauline life, but, in so many ways, she gave it to me. Pauline has the freedom to think for herself. I had some freedom, too, and I had a choice, too. I could have been my mother, and instead I decided to heal myself. My heart is very heavy for my whole family-even my dad. They're not bad people, really." She remembered the plea she'd made to God on her knees in the bathroom, years earlier, to know love before she died. "I thought that Dan was the answer to that prayer," she said. "But now I see that Pauline is the answer. Pauline was also the instrument. I opened my heart up to God first, then Pauline, then Jeffrey. Then I just thought, 'Okay, who's next?'" I opened my heart up to God first, then Pauline, then Jeffrey. Then I just thought, 'Okay, who's next?'"

Rape-derived pregnancy has come under specific scrutiny in the context of genocidal rape. If one's goal were to extirpate a race, one might imagine that the most appropriate tactic would be forced sterilization. In many armed conflicts, however, the conquerors impregnate the conquered race, who perforce deliver babies to the victors. This pervasive phenomenon is called forced pregnancy forced pregnancy. A report from the War and Children Identity Project estimates some half a million people living now were so conceived. The British psychiatrist Ruth Seifert wrote, "The rape of women communicates from man to man, so to speak, that the men around the women in question are not able to protect 'their' women." Susan Brownmiller describes this full-scale invasion of women's bodies as "an extracurricular battlefield." There is a huge difference between these cases and the pregnancies through rape that occur in peacetime in the developed world, where being pregnant doesn't get you killed, doesn't mean you will be banned from your community, doesn't make you unmarriageable. In the West, one can hide a child's origins; one can give him up for adoption. Women who acknowledge and keep these children can often find men won't care where their child came from. The ethnic issues in many conflict zones, however, leave women pregnant from rape with no way to hide their story. The family knows; the community knows; there is no continuity with their previous life.

The genocide in Rwanda began on April 6, 1994, after the plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down. In the hundred days that followed, eight hundred thousand members of the minority Tutsi ethnic group were killed. Unlike the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust, where the killings were clinical, systematic, and remote, the Rwandan mass butchery was a hands-on affair. The killings were committed by the Interahamwe-youth militias of the majority Hutu ethnicity-and farmers, mainly with farm implements, and persisted until Tutsi forces regained the capital city of Kigali. Now the Hutus again live under a largely Tutsi regime and feel enslaved by a hated minority, while the Tutsis loathe the Hutus for having murdered their families. In official interviews, Rwandans say, "Plus jamais" "Plus jamais" (Never again), but in private, most of the people I met said another eruption was only a matter of time. (Never again), but in private, most of the people I met said another eruption was only a matter of time.

A Rwandan proverb says, "A woman who is not yet battered is not a real woman." The culture's underlying misogyny was easily stoked by ethnic propaganda. By some estimates, as many as half a million women were raped during the paroxysm of terror, and subsequently they gave birth to as many as five thousand children. One woman recounted having a member of the murderous youth brigades back her up against a wall and then take his knife to her vagina, cutting out the entire lining of it, and hanging the gory tube of flesh from a stick outside her house. Many Hutus perceived Tutsi women-who tend to be tall, slender, and regal-as haughty and were determined to teach them a lesson. They raped not only to humiliate and shame their victims, but also as a way of killing; many of the men were HIV-positive and were encouraged by their leaders to infect as many Tutsi women as possible. About half of the Tutsi women who survived the genocide had been raped, and most of those contracted HIV. birth to as many as five thousand children. One woman recounted having a member of the murderous youth brigades back her up against a wall and then take his knife to her vagina, cutting out the entire lining of it, and hanging the gory tube of flesh from a stick outside her house. Many Hutus perceived Tutsi women-who tend to be tall, slender, and regal-as haughty and were determined to teach them a lesson. They raped not only to humiliate and shame their victims, but also as a way of killing; many of the men were HIV-positive and were encouraged by their leaders to infect as many Tutsi women as possible. About half of the Tutsi women who survived the genocide had been raped, and most of those contracted HIV.

The children produced through Rwanda's genocidal rapes are called les les enfants de mauvais souvenir, enfants de mauvais souvenir, or "the children of bad memories"; one writer called them the "living legacy of a time of death." Rwandan society blames the women, so these pregnancies were "rejected and concealed, often denied and discovered late," according to Dr. Catherine Bonnet, who studied the Rwandan rape problem. She observed that these women often self-induced abortion, attempted suicide, or committed infanticide. Some women left rape babies on church steps; the country is peppered with orphanages. or "the children of bad memories"; one writer called them the "living legacy of a time of death." Rwandan society blames the women, so these pregnancies were "rejected and concealed, often denied and discovered late," according to Dr. Catherine Bonnet, who studied the Rwandan rape problem. She observed that these women often self-induced abortion, attempted suicide, or committed infanticide. Some women left rape babies on church steps; the country is peppered with orphanages.

To understand how children of wartime rape differ from children conceived in less systematic rapes, I traveled to Rwanda in 2004, at the tenth anniversary of the genocide. I could not identify women who had abandoned or killed their children; the women I saw had kept their children. Many had been cast out by their families, who wanted nothing to do with "the child of an Interahamwe," and most were struggling to feed themselves and their children. The enfants de mauvais souvenir enfants de mauvais souvenir are accepted by neither Hutus nor Tutsis, and some Rwandan hospitals refuse to treat them. Jean Damascene Ndayambaje, head of the Department of Psychology at the National University of Rwanda, explained that it was considered a disgrace for the women to have allowed themselves to be raped rather than killed. are accepted by neither Hutus nor Tutsis, and some Rwandan hospitals refuse to treat them. Jean Damascene Ndayambaje, head of the Department of Psychology at the National University of Rwanda, explained that it was considered a disgrace for the women to have allowed themselves to be raped rather than killed.

Esperance Mukamana, who works for AVEGA, the widows' organization in Rwanda, said that most of these castoff mothers "never find true love for their children. They love them enough to survive, but no more." Ndayambaje described how one woman had to be physically restrained while doctors performed a cesarean because she had clenched her vaginal muscles tightly in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the birth. When the doctors brought her the baby, she began ranting and was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Some mothers gave their children names such as War or Child of Hate or Little Killer. Mukamana said, "The children know that their mothers don't love them, but they don't know why. They speak and their mothers don't listen to them; they cry and their mothers don't comfort them. So they develop strange behaviors. They themselves are cold and restless." but they don't know why. They speak and their mothers don't listen to them; they cry and their mothers don't comfort them. So they develop strange behaviors. They themselves are cold and restless."

Unlike most rape survivors, those in Rwanda have the solace and solidarity of a horizontal identity as members of an acknowledged group. Alphonsine Nyirahabimana, who works with wartime rape survivors and their children at AVEGA, said, "No one can forget what happened to them, so they might as well remember together." Some women who had conceived children in rape gained enough strength from this group identity to compensate for their loss of traditional social position. Professor Celestin Kalimba, head of the history department at the National University, said that a new Rwandan feminism has been among the accidental side effects of the genocide. "So much of the male population is either dead or in jail," he said, "and women have to step into major roles." The mothers who endured forced pregnancy emerged from the war as victims, entered a culture that further victimized them, and had to struggle toward a new society-if not for themselves, then for their castigated children.

At thirty-four, Marie Rose Matamura narrated the events of her life in an even monotone, with an air of complete resignation. When the genocide began, she fled to her church, but militias soon arrived and, with her priest's consent, killed almost all the people gathered there. She escaped, but was seized by a Hutu man who claimed her and her sister as his wives. This was not uncommon; many of the militia would force women into sexual slavery, cynically using the word wife wife to euphemize a multitude of sins. Marie Rose's acquiescence to her captor did not obviate her hatred of him. "In the road, hiding, you meet such a man," she said. "He would just go walking around the neighborhood raping the ladies. At any time this man could force me to accept his friends; I was raped by many others. He told me that he had given me HIV so he didn't have to waste time killing me." to euphemize a multitude of sins. Marie Rose's acquiescence to her captor did not obviate her hatred of him. "In the road, hiding, you meet such a man," she said. "He would just go walking around the neighborhood raping the ladies. At any time this man could force me to accept his friends; I was raped by many others. He told me that he had given me HIV so he didn't have to waste time killing me."

Marie Rose's captor fled when the Tutsi forces approached; weak and desperate, Marie Rose and her sister remained in his house. After a medical exam, they learned that they both did, in fact, have HIV and were both pregnant. Marie Rose's sister died on Christmas Day 2001. Marie Rose took on her sister's son and has brought him up with her own daughter. "I am trying to forget what happened and concentrate on feeding them," she told me. "I can't hate my own child or my sister's child, though I never forget where they came from. The children ask me sometimes, 'Who is my father?' and I tell them that they don't have a father, that they never did."

Marie Rose had begun to develop skin lesions and feared that her neighbors recognized them as a symptom of AIDS. "I don't know who will take care of the children when I go," she said. "I go from door to door, asking people if they have dirty clothes to be washed; I braid hair for rich Hutu women with husbands. I feel so sad that I will die-not sad for myself, but for the children. Someday, I will have to tell them the truth. I think all the time about how I will do it and make up the speeches. I will tell them how to behave correctly, and what to do if someone tries to rape them. I fear what they will become with me; I fear what they will become after that, without me."

Rape has been used strategically since ancient times, and recently in at least thirty-six conflicts, including those in Bangladesh, Chechnya, Guatemala, several African nations, East Timor, and the former Yugoslavia. A Human Rights Watch report explained, "These incidents of rape are clearly aimed to subjugate, humiliate, and terrorize the entire community, not just the women and girls raped by the militias." Western observers reported mass suicides of pregnant Chinese women following the Rape of Nanking during the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and many half-Japanese babies were objects of infanticide. After the Bangladeshi conflict, the prime minister called the women who had borne children of rape "national heroines," but many of them nonetheless left their babies in dustbins, and those who kept them were never accepted back into society. After the Kosovo war, a young man in Pristina told the Observer, Observer, "If I were normal, I would keep the kid, accept my wife. But in our culture, death is better than rape. I could not accept my wife. She would be dirty, evil, the castle of the enemy. A lot of women have been very sensible. They have kept quiet, they have given birth at home, and if they are even more sensible, they kill their scum babies." One of the victims of wartime rape in Sarajevo said, "It was a hard birth. It hurt a lot. But after what the Chetniks did to me, it wasn't anything." She never even looked at the baby. "If anyone had tried to show it to me after it was born, I'd have strangled them and the baby, too." "If I were normal, I would keep the kid, accept my wife. But in our culture, death is better than rape. I could not accept my wife. She would be dirty, evil, the castle of the enemy. A lot of women have been very sensible. They have kept quiet, they have given birth at home, and if they are even more sensible, they kill their scum babies." One of the victims of wartime rape in Sarajevo said, "It was a hard birth. It hurt a lot. But after what the Chetniks did to me, it wasn't anything." She never even looked at the baby. "If anyone had tried to show it to me after it was born, I'd have strangled them and the baby, too."

The journalist Helena Smith wrote about a woman named Mirveta who gave birth to a child conceived in rape in Kosovo. Mirveta was twenty and illiterate; her husband had abandoned her because of the pregnancy. "He was a healthy little boy and Mirveta had produced him," Smith writes. "But birth, the fifth in her short lifetime, had not brought joy, only dread. As the young Albanian mother took the child, she prepared to do the deed. She cradled him to her chest, she looked into her boy's eyes, she stroked his face, and she snapped his neck." She then handed the infant back to the nurses, in tears. "In her psychiatric detention cell," Smith noted, "she has been weeping ever since." his neck." She then handed the infant back to the nurses, in tears. "In her psychiatric detention cell," Smith noted, "she has been weeping ever since."

After the Interahamwe killed her husband, Marianne Mukamana went to the militia's base and offered herself, believing it was the only way to save her five-year-old daughter. She was raped countless times in the ensuing weeks and told that she would eventually be killed; instead, she was freed by the Tutsi forces. When Marianne delivered a second daughter nine months after the genocide, she felt a surge of loathing for the baby. Marianne was HIV-positive; her new daughter tested positive as well. "I wanted to throw her away," she recalled. "But then another heart came in me." She resolved that she would teach herself to love her two girls equally. She told me that she felt the same about both daughters, but when I asked whether she would still give the younger one away, she said that she would. The elder daughter is pure Tutsi and looks it; the younger has dark coloring and Hutu features. Neighbors say that they can't be full sisters, but Marianne tells them not to believe the lies of the street. "On my deathbed they will ask me why I am dying so young, and I will tell them everything."

The two girls are competitive for their mother's love. The tradition in Rwanda is that the youngest child is the most beloved, and for Marianne it has been hard to embody that cultural expectation. "I will die of AIDS, and my older daughter will be left alone," she said. "The reason is in the rape that made my younger daughter. How to know that without being angry? I try not to think of the past, because I am afraid of it, and I also don't think of the future, because now I know better than to have dreams."

Given the burdens associated with keeping such children in conflict zones-the loss of social status, the dimmed prospects of marriage-the number of mothers who do so regardless is astonishing. But though they often keep these children in good faith, they cannot necessarily provide them with adequate support. "I was used like a horse by the Indonesian soldiers who took me in turns and made me bear so many children," said a rape survivor in East Timor. "Now I no longer have the strength to push my children towards a better future."

A recent report noted that children of rape "become the symbol of the trauma the nation as a whole went through, and society prefers not to acknowledge their needs." Often, these children face legal problems. Nationality is commonly passed down paternally, so without a father, the child may be stateless. Zahra Ismail of the European University Centre for Peace Studies explained, "This creates a problem for ensuring fundamental social benefits for children, as international law on children's human rights is based on an assumption of state responsibility." In Vietnam, children of mixed race were called "dust of life" after the war and denied education and medical care because they had not been registered by their fathers; some mutilated themselves in attempts to look more American or more Asian. Children of Bosnian rape victims who sought refuge in Croatia were denied citizenship. Children born to raped Kuwaiti women following the Iraqi occupation of 1990 still have no citizenship. Ismail argues that such children are "also, albeit secondarily, victims of the rape, who are denied their basic rights." She continues, "Forced pregnancy has so far been treated solely as a women's issue, not giving children born of war any consideration. This not only led to their marginalization but also contributed to their being overlooked as victims, and later being somehow cast into the perpetrator camp." University Centre for Peace Studies explained, "This creates a problem for ensuring fundamental social benefits for children, as international law on children's human rights is based on an assumption of state responsibility." In Vietnam, children of mixed race were called "dust of life" after the war and denied education and medical care because they had not been registered by their fathers; some mutilated themselves in attempts to look more American or more Asian. Children of Bosnian rape victims who sought refuge in Croatia were denied citizenship. Children born to raped Kuwaiti women following the Iraqi occupation of 1990 still have no citizenship. Ismail argues that such children are "also, albeit secondarily, victims of the rape, who are denied their basic rights." She continues, "Forced pregnancy has so far been treated solely as a women's issue, not giving children born of war any consideration. This not only led to their marginalization but also contributed to their being overlooked as victims, and later being somehow cast into the perpetrator camp."

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child holds that children should have the right of citizenship. It does not, however, separately address the rights of children born of rape, nor contain any guarantee of equal treatment for children born out of wedlock. Foreigners frequently wish to adopt these children, but embarrassed governments ban or complicate that process for the sake of national identity. Governments in the countries where parents hope to adopt these children often make policy that feeds into such shame. The UK, for example, tried to facilitate the adoption of Balkan rape babies, but would not grant rape victims the chance to immigrate to the UK.

Small, wide-eyed, mousy, and sad, Marcelline Niyonsenga maintains the posture of an importuning child, looking up anxiously as if waiting for someone's permission to go on living. She was nineteen when the war began, visiting family in Kigali, and their house was attacked. Shortly thereafter, she found another family with whom to hide. The head of that household, an old man, threw out his wife and forced Marcelline to become his sex slave. After two and a half months, he announced that he was tired of her. She was gang-raped and reluctantly found refuge with another rapist, a businessman who took her with him to Congo. When she learned that the war was over, she begged to go home, but she was pregnant, and her husband had decided to keep her and the child. She waited months for a day when he was away on business. She grabbed three thousand Congolese francs (about $5) and persuaded a taxi driver to take her to Rwanda, where the United Nations High Commission for Refugees took her in. Her damaged uterus had to be removed after the birth of her daughter, whom she named Clemence Tuyisenge. uterus had to be removed after the birth of her daughter, whom she named Clemence Tuyisenge.

Since the war, Marcelline keeps house for her brother, a widower who has refused to let Clemence, who has AIDS, into his home. At least her brother did not abandon her, Marcelline said, even though she was raped and had HIV. Clemence stays with Marcelline's mother, where Marcelline visits her once a week. More worrisome to Marcelline than telling Clemence about her origins was the prospect of explaining to her that neither of them would live long. Clemence's body had already erupted in blisters her mother called "pimples." Whenever Clemence became acutely sick, her grandmother would bring her to Marcelline, who took her to the hospital. When they are both healthy, Clemence and Marcelline laugh together. When Marcelline is sick, Clemence curls up next to her to comfort her. Marcelline often ponders whether it would be better for her daughter to predecease her; on balance, she feels it would be preferable. "People pity me because I have this enfant de mauvais souvenir, enfant de mauvais souvenir, but she is the light of my life," she said. "To be slowly dying like this without even the comfort of a child would be a thousand times worse. I am dying, but I am not alone." but she is the light of my life," she said. "To be slowly dying like this without even the comfort of a child would be a thousand times worse. I am dying, but I am not alone."

One woman I met outside Gitarama explained that a man killed her family, including her husband and three children, took her in sexual slavery for the duration of the genocide, and then fled. She gave birth to a son, then developed AIDS; the son remained healthy. Knowing she would soon die, she worried that he would have no relatives to care for him. So she tracked down his father in jail-this man who had killed her husband and children-and decided to build a relationship with him. Every day she brought him homemade meals in prison. She could not speak of what she was doing without staring fixedly at the floor.

In discussing wartime rape, Bishop Carlos Belo of East Timor, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, said, "Up to three thousand died in 1999, untold numbers of women were raped, and five hundred thousand persons displaced-one hundred thousand are yet to return." Susan Harris Rimmer of the Australian National University has pointed out that while other wartime atrocities are enumerated, the number of women subject to rape and forced pregnancy usually remains a mere impression. The word untold, untold, in her view, is both literal and metaphoric. in her view, is both literal and metaphoric.

Since 1869, the Geneva Convention has guaranteed the wounded and sick in battle medical care, and many would argue that abortion for rape victims falls within these parameters. The UN Human Rights Council has indicated that denying a woman an abortion after rape may constitute cruel and inhuman treatment. But the United States continues to enforce the 1973 Helms Amendment, which states, "No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." The current interpretation of that language is that any country or organization that receives US aid is prohibited from discussing or providing abortions even to women pregnant owing to wartime rape. "The truth is, almost all women pregnant from wartime rape would choose to abort," said Janet Benshoof, president of the Global Justice Center. "In Congo, forty percent of the rape victims are children. If you're thirteen, how can you bear a child? The mortality rates are incredible. The UN estimates that twenty percent of women who are raped in conflict and denied abortions will try to self-abort-which doesn't include the ones who have killed themselves instead." The US government pays for so-called cleanup kits to treat women who have botched their self-abortions, Benshoof said, "so we clearly know what's going on. These rapes are genocidally motivated, and we're facilitating genocide by making these women bear these children." Council has indicated that denying a woman an abortion after rape may constitute cruel and inhuman treatment. But the United States continues to enforce the 1973 Helms Amendment, which states, "No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." The current interpretation of that language is that any country or organization that receives US aid is prohibited from discussing or providing abortions even to women pregnant owing to wartime rape. "The truth is, almost all women pregnant from wartime rape would choose to abort," said Janet Benshoof, president of the Global Justice Center. "In Congo, forty percent of the rape victims are children. If you're thirteen, how can you bear a child? The mortality rates are incredible. The UN estimates that twenty percent of women who are raped in conflict and denied abortions will try to self-abort-which doesn't include the ones who have killed themselves instead." The US government pays for so-called cleanup kits to treat women who have botched their self-abortions, Benshoof said, "so we clearly know what's going on. These rapes are genocidally motivated, and we're facilitating genocide by making these women bear these children."

Alphonsine Mukamakuza is tall, dramatic, and expressive, with all the grace and chiseled beauty for which the Tutsi are known. The deadness that afflicted many of the women I interviewed had not touched her; she would be laughing one minute and wracked with sobs the next. She lived in a mud hut on the outskirts of Kigali, furnished incongruously with an airplane seat propped in a corner, and two broken wooden chairs. The only light came through a crack between the roof and the wall. In spite of this poverty, she was impeccably dressed in a long, cotton print dress and matching turban.

Alphonsine was twenty when the genocide began. She thought that the barbarism had broken out only in her village, so she fled to relatives in a neighboring village. The killing had started there, too, so she and her relatives decided to seek refuge across the border in Burundi. They were near their destination when shooting broke out. Alphonsine kept running as the rest of her family were gunned down behind her. She bolted into a house, where an old woman promised to hide her. That night, the old woman's son, an Interahamwe, came home. When he saw the elegant woman his mother had sheltered, he announced that he would make her his "wife." For three weeks he raped her repeatedly, and she did all she could to appease him, because without his protection she would probably be killed.

A month later Alphonsine realized that she was pregnant. After her son, Jean-de-Dieu Ngabonziza, was born, life became increasingly difficult. She moved in with a man who demanded that she "get rid of that child" or leave. Alphonsine made sure her son knew that he was a burden, beating him mercilessly and occasionally throwing him out of the house. If they went out in public, she would say, "Call me your aunt. Never call me your mother." Meanwhile, her consort beat her day and night. Finally, she summoned the courage to leave and moved to the slum where I found her. "And then," she recalled, "I saw that my boy was all I had. And sometimes he would laugh, despite everything, and it was when he laughed that I began to love him." son, Jean-de-Dieu Ngabonziza, was born, life became increasingly difficult. She moved in with a man who demanded that she "get rid of that child" or leave. Alphonsine made sure her son knew that he was a burden, beating him mercilessly and occasionally throwing him out of the house. If they went out in public, she would say, "Call me your aunt. Never call me your mother." Meanwhile, her consort beat her day and night. Finally, she summoned the courage to leave and moved to the slum where I found her. "And then," she recalled, "I saw that my boy was all I had. And sometimes he would laugh, despite everything, and it was when he laughed that I began to love him."

The 1998 Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (commonly called the war-crimes tribunal), lists as a crime against humanity "the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population or carrying out grave violations of international law." It does not stipulate that damages are due to the victims; it is concerned primarily with the punishment of the perpetrators, especially those of higher rank who have initiated rape campaigns. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda achieved a breakthrough in 1998 when it found Jean-Paul Akayesu, a local mayor who had encouraged police to rape Tutsi women, guilty of crimes against humanity and torture. It was the first time that forced pregnancy was prosecuted as a form of genocide. But the statute and the legal precedent imply that the issue is genocidal intent, rather than mass rape. For women who are raped and become pregnant as a result, the parsing of motivation is irrelevant; to their children, it is meaningless. "Male victims of torture are received by their own society as heroes," Benshoof said. "Female victims of torture are considered prostitutes who have dishonored their families." In Iraq, more than half the women who reported being raped in the year after the American invasion were killed by their own families.

Legal scholars have worked toward establishing protections for women raped during war, but little work has been done toward providing for the resultant children, who are commonly abused, abandoned, or both. Rimmer has argued that such children should be reclassified as veterans, "publicly accepted as having valid claims on the Government, rather than seen as by-products of a crime or sin." This classification would give the children a pension; it would acknowledge the women's bravery and the children's challenges. Jeanne Muliri Kabekatyo, a regional manager for HEAL Africa who works with these mothers on building their relationships with their children, said, "We want to make out of these children artisans of peace."

Christine Uwamahoro's proud, erect carriage was not typical of the violated women I met in Rwanda. She was eighteen and living in Kigali when the killing started. One of the Interahamwe broke into her house and said, "Undress and lie down, or I'll kill you and your family." He came back repeatedly, and after each rape her father would give him money to go away. The family fled, but soon came to a bridge with a roadblock. They sat by the side of the road for two hours, waiting and watching as other people were slaughtered. As dusk fell, one of the Interahamwe approached with a murderous look, and they ran, but Christine's mother faltered. Christine's brother tried to help her. Over her shoulder, Christine saw them both being chopped up with machetes. Christine and her father walked sixty miles to the city of Gisenyi, hiding by day and stealing quietly along the road by night. By the time they arrived, however, the killing had spread there, too, so they walked another few miles into Congo, where they waited out the war. There, Christine realized she was pregnant.

She feared that she had become infected with HIV, but couldn't bear to find out and never did. She would pummel her infant daughter out of sheer loathing and gave the baby to her own father so she would not have to see her. Even ten years later, the child's existence filled Christine with sadness. She visited her sole surviving sister every day, but she visited her daughter once a month at most.

Unlike most women with enfants de mauvais souvenir, enfants de mauvais souvenir, Christine remarried. Her new husband is a polygamous Congolese man who keeps another wife. "I couldn't marry a Rwandan after what had happened, not even a Tutsi," she said. "At first, I tried to hide my history from my new husband, but eventually I told him all about it, and he has been very kind. When I get sad, he takes me out for a walk. When I have flashbacks and bad dreams, which happens often, he reminds me that I could have been killed, and he comforts me." He even proposed that the rape-conceived child live with them, but Christine didn't want that. Christine remarried. Her new husband is a polygamous Congolese man who keeps another wife. "I couldn't marry a Rwandan after what had happened, not even a Tutsi," she said. "At first, I tried to hide my history from my new husband, but eventually I told him all about it, and he has been very kind. When I get sad, he takes me out for a walk. When I have flashbacks and bad dreams, which happens often, he reminds me that I could have been killed, and he comforts me." He even proposed that the rape-conceived child live with them, but Christine didn't want that.

I sometimes ask interviewees, especially those who seem profoundly disenfranchised, whether they have any questions for me. The invitation to reverse roles helps people feel less like experimental subjects. In Rwanda, these mothers' questions tended to be the same: How long are you spending in the country? How many people are you interviewing? When will your research be published? Who will read these stories? At the end of my interview with Christine, I asked whether she had any questions. "Well," she said a little hesitantly, "you write about this field of psychology." I nodded. She took a deep breath. "Can you tell me how to love my daughter more? I want to love her so much, and I try my best, but when I look at her, I see what happened to me and it interferes." A tear rolled down her cheek, but her tone was almost fiercely challenging when she repeated, "Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?" I try my best, but when I look at her, I see what happened to me and it interferes." A tear rolled down her cheek, but her tone was almost fiercely challenging when she repeated, "Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?"

Only afterward, too late to tell Christine, did I marvel that she did not know how much love was in that question itself. It is what anyone asks herself who lives with a child ignominiously conceived, who wishes to disentangle her own ambivalence. It calls starkly into question how much of any woman's love is inherent in mammalian DNA, how much it is a matter of social convention, and how much it is the result of personal determination.

More than any other parents coping with exceptional children, women with rape-conceived children are trying to quell the darkness within themselves in order to give their progeny light. For no other exceptional families is there less coherent support than for these. These mothers and their children need an identity community, a place to find more dignity than can be achieved in the piecemeal world of online supports. The children described in the rest of this book sustain injuries; these children, through no fault of their own, are are injuries. But the ordeal that produces them does not shrink their mothers' hearts so much as those mothers themselves often fear. Maternal love can entrance these women even as they guard against it. injuries. But the ordeal that produces them does not shrink their mothers' hearts so much as those mothers themselves often fear. Maternal love can entrance these women even as they guard against it.

X

Crime

Unlike most of the conditions discussed in this book, criminality is the child's fault, something he has done deliberately and with choice. It is also the parents' fault, something they could have prevented with decent moral education and adequate vigilance. These, at least, are the popular conceptions, and so parents of criminals live in a territory of anger and guilt, struggling to forgive both their children and themselves. To be or to produce a schizophrenic or a child with DS is generally deemed a misfortune; to be or produce a criminal is often deemed a failure. While parents of children with disabilities receive state funding, parents of criminals are frequently prosecuted.

If you have a child who is a dwarf, you are not dwarfed yourself, and if your child is deaf, it does not impair your own hearing; but a child who is morally culpable seems like an indictment of mother and father. Parents whose kids do well take credit for it, and the obverse of their self-congratulation is that parents whose kids do badly must have erred. Unfortunately, virtuous parenting is no warranty against corrupt children. Yet these parents find themselves morally diminished, and the force of blame impedes their ability to help-sometimes even to love-their felonious progeny.