The raw story of a mother whose daughter was killed by gang members in Haiti

It was the worst gang war Haiti has seen in years.

Criminals fighting for territory had blocked almost all escape routes from the largest slum in the Country in the Capital.

Armed men went door to door, burning down homes and murdering residents they judged to be loyal to their enemies.

However, a woman named Mamaille had hope.

She raised her four children alone, after the children’s father disappeared months before. Mamaille, 39, never found out if he was killed or simply fled the endless violence.

Now he had found a way to get at least one daughter out of his neighborhood.

It would be dangerous, but sitting idly by meant living in fear of knowing that unspeakable atrocities could happen at any moment. It meant walking miles begging in front of churches to feed her family, when simply leaving home could cost her her life.

The random murders, the massacres, the houses burned to the ground, the charred and mutilated bodies piling up under the sun—those nightmares were well documented. People were sharing photos of the latest gang victims in their WhatsApp chat groups. For Mamaille, poverty made fleeing almost impossible. Then, she learned of a plan involving a fearless nun whom she believed could save her daughter.

Mamaille’s neighborhood, Cité Soleil, is dominated by two rival gangs with zones of control so well defined that residents can accurately map the streets that divide their territories.

Previously, gangs made a greater effort to win the trust of the people they ruled, experts said.

That has apparently changed in recent years, however, as the government ceded more power than ever to armed groups that began annexing vast new territory — and carrying out large-scale kidnappings and extortion.

“They are making so much money that they are not taking orders from anyone,” said Reginald Delva, a Haitian security adviser.

To assert their dominance, armed groups have become agents of uncontrollable terror. One of his favorite weapons: rape.

“It is another way of intimidating the population,” said Sister Paesie, a nun who has opened several schools and shelters in some of the poorest areas of the Capital.

In one of her facilities, the nun has welcomed dozens of women and girls who were raped or threatened by gang members.

So many women have fled Cité Soleil that Paesie ran out of space to house them, so she started renting homes in safer neighborhoods for them.

In July, Paesie received a call from one of the schools that operates in Cité Soleil. Rumor had spread that the nun was ready to take school children to a safer area, and so hundreds of students had gathered at a local chapel to wait for her.

Mamaille’s 17-year-old daughter was among them.

However, Paesie was unable to enter the area due to the intense violence that day—so Mamaille and her daughter headed home.

Just before I got home, automatic weapons fire broke out.

“I saw that my daughter had been shot,” Mamaille recalled. By the time she took her daughter to a clinic, the girl was already dead.

The next day, Paesie made it to the edge of the Mamaille neighborhood, saying she did help evacuate hundreds of children over time. The nun has witnessed much pain in Haiti. But what happened to Mamaille and her daughter has made her feel more powerless than almost anything else.

After leaving her daughter’s lifeless body at the clinic, Mamaille wandered the streets screaming in anguish.

Her crying must have drawn the attention of gang members because a group of armed men dragged her behind a house and raped her, one by one, Mamaille said. There were eight men and they beat her before leaving, she narrated.

After the men left, Mamaille had no choice but to get to her feet, walk home, and somehow resume the work of survival.

At night, when Mamaille stares up at the roof of her shack, she can see the sky through bullet holes left in her tin roof after a confrontation last summer.

Imagine your daughter up there. “I think her soul could be in heaven and I start to cry,” Mamaille said.

By: This article was written by Natalie Kitroeff, Andre Paultre and Adriana Zehbrauskas