In a city run by gangs, young rape grows baby

Warning: This story contains rape rape and other violence that readers can find trouble.

Helen was 17 years old when the gang attacked her neighborhood in Haiti’s capital, Port-O-Press.

She strokes her daughter, her knees, describing how armed men abducted her as she tried to escape and kept her for more than two months.

“They raped me and beat me up every day. A few different men. I didn’t even know their names, they were disguised,” says the young woman whose name we changed to protect her identity. “Some things they did with me are too painful to share with you.”

“I got pregnant, they continued to tell me that I should abort pregnancy and I said” no. “This may be the only one I had if I had.”

She managed to escape until the gang was caught in the fight for maintaining the territory. Now 19 years, she spent last year, raising her daughter in a safe home in the suburbs of the city.

At least 30 girls and young women who sleep in bunk beds in colorful colored rooms live in a safe home.

Helen is the oldest rape that survived here. The youngest is only 12. Playing and dancing on the balcony in blue peas, it looks much younger than her age, suffering from malnutrition in the past. Employees tell us that she was raped several times.

Rape and other sexual violence in Haiti is increasing when armed gangs expand their control over Port-O Prince and beyond.

The Nation of the Caribbean has covered a wave of violence in the gang since the attempted in 2021 by President Johoven Mise.

It is difficult to measure the scale of sexual abuse. Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) manages the clinic in Central Port-Ow-Women who have experienced sexual abuse. The data they have divided exclusively with the BBC shows that the number of patients has almost three times increased since 2021.

The gangs are known for sweeping the neighborhoods and killing dozens. MSF says many rape women and girls are often included in these large -scale attacks. From the accounts of the survivor, it is clear that gangs use rape to terrorize and subjugate whole communities.

The BBC challenged the gang leaders accounting the killings and rape. One previously told us that they did not control the actions of their members and believe that they have a “duty” to fight the state. The other said, “When we fight, we own – we are no longer human.”

“Patients have begun to share very, very complex stories since 2021,” says Diana Arroy, Head of MSF Mission in Haiti.

“The survivors talk about two -four, or up to 20 aggressors,” she says, adding that more women are now saying that they are threatened with weapons or beaten unconscious.

Women also often report that their attackers are under 18, she adds.

In the center of the capture in another part of the city, four women-at ages from the late 20’s to 70 years, write attacks in front of your children and husbands.

“Our neighborhood is napped, I just returned home to find mom, dad, my sister, all were killed. They killed them, and then burned the house with them inside,” says one woman.

After examining her devastated house, she was going to leave the neighborhood when she collided with the gang members. “They raped me-in me was a six-year-old girl. They also raped her,” she continues. “Then they killed my younger brother before us.”

“Every time my daughter looks at me, she’s sad and cries.”

Other women tell the attacks that follow a similar scheme – murder, rape and arson.

Sexual violence is just one element of the crisis that has enclosed Haiti. UN agencies say more than a tenth of the population – 1.3 million people – fled at home, and half the population threatens acute hunger.

There has been no chosen leadership since the murder of MIZ in Haiti. The Transitional Presidential Council and a number of prime ministers he appointed was instructed to govern the country and organize the election.

Gangs -Rivals formed the union, turning weapons into a Haitian state, not each other.

Since the last time we traveled in December, the situation has deteriorated. Hundreds of thousands of more people were moved. More than 4,000 people were killed in the first half of 2025, compared to 5400 throughout 2024, the UN reports.

The gang estimates increased their control from 85% to 90% of capital, seizing key quarters, trade routes and public infrastructure, despite efforts by Kenyan security force.

We join the international force when they patrol the area controlled by the gang, but within a few minutes one of the tires on their armored car shot and the operation ends.

Members of force rarely leave their armored vehicles. Experts say gangs continue to buy powerful weapons and maintain the top.

In recent months, Haiti authorities have concluded mercenaries to help go back to back.

The Haiti Security Source told the BBC that private military companies, including one of the US, work on the ground and use drones to attack gang leaders.

He showed us that he, he said, was one leader of the gang, Ti Lapli, aimed at the explosion. He says Ti Lapli remained in critical condition, though the BBC could not confirm it.

But the fear of gangs remains in the city. In many neighborhoods, Vigilant groups take safety into their own hands, which further increases the number of young people with weapons on the streets.

“We are not going to let them (gangs) come here and kill us – steal everything we have, burn cars, burn houses, kill children,” says the man who uses the name “Mike”.

He says he works with a group in Croix-Des-PRés, a noisy market close to the gang.

As the gun is slightly slightly, no one shudders. People here are used to it.

He says gangs pay young boys to join, and set the checkpoints where they require money from residents passing through.

“Of course, everyone is afraid,” he tells us. “We feel alone trying to protect women and children. Because gangs continue to spread, we know that our area may be next.”

Humanitarian agencies say the situation is deteriorating, and women are one of the most violent when many of them face a double injury to sexual abuse and movement.

Lola Castro, the regional director of the UN World Food Program, says Port-O Prince “is the most terrible place in the world to become a woman.”

Women here can also feel the impact of reduction on humanitarian aid programs, she adds.

Haiti has long become one of the largest recipients of the US International Development Agency (USAID), which President Donald Trump has reduced, transferring it “waste”.

When we visited in June, Ms. Castro said WFP spreads the latest US -funded food aid.

Giving food protects women, she explained because it saves them from the need to be on the streets, asking or looking for food.

Humanitarian workers are also afraid that reductions may soon affect the support of victims of violence in places such as a safe home where Helen lives.

And Ms. Manila Arroo with MSF says contraceptive financing has also declined: “Many of our patients already have children. Many of them under the age of 18 with children. The risk of pregnancy is a lot of new problems for them.”

Helen and other women in a safe home are often sitting and talking together on a balcony that looks through a Port-o-Prince, but many are too afraid to leave the safety of their walls.

She does not know how she will support her young daughter when she grows up.

“I always dreamed of going to school, studying and doing something from myself,” she says. “I always knew that I had children, just not this young.”