A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

Everyone Scattered
When the rebels came everyone scattered…They beat and raped me. When
the NPFL left, I ran. 35
Statement givers told the TRC again and again of the trauma of being separated from family members
in the chaos of fighting and flight. 36 For example, one statement giver described her mother going
to Paynesville one day to run an errand, but the rebels invaded and cut her off from her family
for the next several months. 37 This experience was common as rebels established shifting lines of
demarcation and zones of control throughout Monrovia and the surrounding areas. 38 When routes
between home, office, school, and market were cut off, families were separated without any advance
warning. A woman who was a young teenager during the war spoke of her separation from her mother
in June 1990. 39 Upon learning that rebels were nearing their housing estate in Gardnersville, the
statement giver’s mother decided to move the family into Monrovia to stay with an aunt. Her mother
took the girls and the baby to town first and then returned to Gardnersville for the boys living in the
household. She did not see her mother again for almost three years because her mother’s return to
Monrovia was cut off by the rebel advance. 40
I was living in Refinery Junction, Monrovia, with my husband and my
children. In 1990, Charles Taylor’s rebels arrived at our house and started
shooting. My father, mother, husband, children and brothers and sisters
were there. The rebels killed my older brother and raped my sister. Everyone
scattered. I was only with my youngest child. I saw the rebels burn my house
down. I went to Nimba County by car and then walked through the bush
to Côte d’Ivoire. In Côte d’Ivoire I found the members of my family who
survived. 41
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