"Even after peace arrives, rape persists"

On a visit to Liberia, Nicholas Kristof investigates child rape in Liberia and measures being taken to prevent it and to prosecute the perpetrators.

Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes find that to get good grades, they must have sex with their teachers.

“Rape is a scar that the war left behind,” said Dixon Jlateh, an officer in the national police unit dealing with sexual violence. “Sexual violence is a direct product of the war.”