Volunteers: Peace Corps insensitive to rapes

[JBeukema]

It was an extraordinarily dramatic scene, even for Congress: three Peace Corps volunteers raped while serving overseas, along with the mother of a fourth who was murdered in Benin, complaining to lawmakers about one of the government's most revered agencies.
Their theme was similar: The Peace Corps, which happens to be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, did little to train its workers about how to avoid or deal with violent attacks. And it reacted insensitively and unhelpfully in the aftermath of the crimes, they said.
"I want the young women who go into the Peace Corps today to be protected," said Carol Marie Clark, who testified Wednesday that she joined the Peace Corps in 1984 at age 22 in Nepal and was raped and impregnated by the program's director there.
"If anything happens to them, I want those women to be treated with compassion and respect," said Clark, now a teacher in rural North Carolina. "They should be heard, supported and healed, not blamed, reprimanded or ignored."

All too common a story within the 'Peace Corps'