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HAITI - CNN HERO FINALIST, MALYA
VILLARD-APPOLON CONTINUES TO BELIEVE IN WOMEN & CHANGE
Displaced protesters in a September 2012 tent camp on
the edge of
(WNN)
The CNN award for 2012, which picked
s woman grieved the loss of their children, working to find missing members of their families under the rubble of the 2010 earthquake, increasing reports on violence in the region against women began, and continue today to strike fear in many women.
“The pain is not nice, the scars will never leave. I was not a victim just once,” said Villard-Appolon to WNN. “I’m sacrificing myself to work because these things don’t happen just once,” continued Malya. “Every time I talk to a victim and she tells me what has happened to her, it’s as if I was reliving what has happened to me. I feel the pain again,” she added.
Sexual trauma advocates and counselors often share the experience mental and emotional setbacks due to depression, fear, feelings of helplessness, anger and feelings of suicide with rape victims. These symptoms are often part of what experts call victims’ PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that can affect advocates with secondary trauma as they work to help women recover from their experience.
“While these symptoms subside with time, some may afflict the survivor for
prolonged periods,” says a 2008
“…traumatic events do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, traumatic events hold
tremendous meaning for those touching the survivors’ lives,
affecting all persons involved. In fact, the effects and ramifications of
trauma are not limited solely to the survivor, but have also been shown to
affect those that help the survivor…,” said PTSD/trauma expert and
Psychologist Stephanie Baird in her 1999 Masters thesis report.
Working with care and compassion KOFAVIV works closely with women in the camps as survivors of violence by listening deeply and helping them know that local advocates, who have also faced violence themselves, are available. These advocates support women survivors to speak out about the violence they’ve received. KOFAVIV also helps women get to the hospital as soon as possible after they have been raped, so medical assessment and documentation can be made within 72 hours, a requirement by the police and the courts.
KOFAVIV also offers a safehouse for women with a ‘follow-up’ program that
can help women connect to other resources that often include important
emotional counseling and support. But the key to the work for Villard-Appolon,
and other advocates in the region, is the search for legal justice for the
women and girls of
In the first 150 days following
This year conditions are getting better as over 60 cases of sexual violence crime have reached the courts says Allie Torgon of CNN, in a recent October 2012 report.
“Since the earthquake, we’ve worked a lot with women so that they speak up about the violence that they have suffered. People didn’t like to talk about it, but we’ve worked on this a lot and women are starting to speak up,” says Malya Villard-Appolon. “KOFAVIV has helped a lot; we’ve helped relieve a lot of pain, a lot of misery. But the government should work with us, should understand what we are doing, so that together we can bring about change in this country,” she added.
Organizing in the face of what climate experts called “horrific adversity” with 1.5 million homeless, following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 12, 2010, one of the other finalists nominated for this year’s CNN Heroes, Malya Villard-Appolon, has a story that many women cannot tell. She moved immediately to help personally during a crisis for women that came on the footsteps of the natural disaster that displaced 1.3 million people, killing 316,000 and injuring 300,000.
The crisis for women wasn’t new, but the devastating loss of buildings and
homes during the 2010 earthquake caused women to face a new vulnerability – a
vulnerability that caused rape to rise markedly in the region, as thousands of
women worked to survive in tent cities inside, and surrounding, the city of
“Violence against women has always been an issue in Haiti and we’ve noticed that it has changed since the earthquake,” says Villard-Appolon outlining the root need for women as co-founder of the grassroots Haiti-based organization called KOFAVIV – Commission for Women Victims for Victims.
Starting in 2004 KOFAVIV began working with women who have suffered under
poverty, abuse, sexual exploitation, under-privilege, violence and rape in the
region. Their assistance came not per se as experts on global women and
development, nor as only ‘good wishing’ bystanders, but as victims themselves
of the ongoing violence against women that has plagued
The women of KOFAVIV have experienced the same type and intensity of
violence that the women they were helping had experienced; and this was key to
the organization’s impact from the beginning. This type of peer-to-peer
advocacy works. It also worked to help bring attention to the need for change
in the rape laws for
Malya Villard-Appolon, co-founder of KOFAVIV. Image: CNN Heroes
In 2011 KOFAVIV, with international partners, also worked to bring reform to
Latortue became leader of
This legal trouble for women, who were already suffering under severe lack
of protection living in tent cities following
Villard-Appolon’s work not only focused on legislative reform; her
on-the-ground efforts continue today through KOFAVIV. “In
“We were all victims; I was a victim. I swore that I would give support and services to other women who were victims but also that I would work so that there would be no more victims,” said Malya as she outlined her past in a recent interview with WNN – Women News Network.
Rape has been widespread in the tent camps. Today crimes are still occurring
at a regular pace as women and their families suffer under horrible conditions
in makeshift camps surrounding
As woman grieved the loss of their children, working to find missing members of their families under the rubble of the 2010 earthquake, increasing reports on violence in the region against women began, and continue today to strike fear in many women.
“The pain is not nice, the scars will never leave. I was not a victim just once,” said Villard-Appolon to WNN. “I’m sacrificing myself to work because these things don’t happen just once,” continued Malya. “Every time I talk to a victim and she tells me what has happened to her, it’s as if I was reliving what has happened to me. I feel the pain again,” she added.
Sexual trauma advocates and counselors often share the experience mental and emotional setbacks due to depression, fear, feelings of helplessness, anger and feelings of suicide with rape victims. These symptoms are often part of what experts call victims’ PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that can affect advocates with secondary trauma as they work to help women recover from their experience.
“While these symptoms subside with time, some may afflict the survivor for
prolonged periods,” says a 2008
“…traumatic events do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, traumatic events hold
tremendous meaning for those touching the survivors’ lives,
affecting all persons involved. In fact, the effects and ramifications of
trauma are not limited solely to the survivor, but have also been shown to
affect those that help the survivor…,” said PTSD/trauma expert and
Psychologist Stephanie Baird in her 1999 Masters thesis report.
Working with care and compassion KOFAVIV works closely with women in the camps as survivors of violence by listening deeply and helping them know that local advocates, who have also faced violence themselves, are available. These advocates support women survivors to speak out about the violence they’ve received. KOFAVIV also helps women get to the hospital as soon as possible after they have been raped, so medical assessment and documentation can be made within 72 hours, a requirement by the police and the courts.
KOFAVIV also offers a safehouse for women with a ‘follow-up’ program that
can help women connect to other resources that often include important
emotional counseling and support. But the key to the work for Villard-Appolon,
and other advocates in the region, is the search for legal justice for the
women and girls of
In the first 150 days following
This year conditions are getting better as over 60 cases of sexual violence crime have reached the courts says Allie Torgon of CNN, in a recent October 2012 report.
“Since the earthquake, we’ve worked a lot with women so that they speak up about the violence that they have suffered. People didn’t like to talk about it, but we’ve worked on this a lot and women are starting to speak up,” says Malya Villard-Appolon. “KOFAVIV has helped a lot; we’ve helped relieve a lot of pain, a lot of misery. But the government should work with us, should understand what we are doing, so that together we can bring about change in this country,” she added.