Cover Photo: This is an all too common abuse and/or misinterpretation of a photo from post earthquake Haiti. South Atlantic Press Agency, as well as MercoPress, used the AFP photo as an illustration (bait) for an article on gender violence in Haiti. You can find the original explanation for what happened here at an NBC news site. The man lying dead was a security guard accidentally shot by another security guard. The woman pictured is his grieving wife. The men holding her arms are not raping her, they are trying to restrain and console here. But the South Atlantic Press and MercoPress–among others–borrowed the photo for an article about rape. Atlantic Press, for example, entitled their piece,
“Haiti: Sexual violence against women increasing.”
The photo caption reads, “More than 250 rapes in camps were reported in the 150 days following the earthquake.”
The implication with the photo is that these men are raping the woman. Perhaps they killed the man in the background laying in a pool of blood so they could rape the woman. As seen above, that’s not the case and associating the image with the byline about rape make it an outright lie. But while this might have been accomplished by medium sized press outlets, it’s a great example of what the press in general has done regarding rapes in Haiti for years, both before and after the earthquake. Most Haiti rape epidemics are founded on lies. For a full expose of the absurd history of rape epidemics in Haiti, why they occur and who they have benefited, read this White Paper about the History of Haiti’s Fabricated Rape Epidemics. For data on what the real incidence of rape in 2010-2012 post-earthquake Haiti read Estimating Rape in Post Earthquake Haiti: Scaling up Technique
