Hurrah for Lucy!It's rather sad that the theme of the article is that rape "is being" used - it always has been. The Sabine women were not just posing for a picture! Rape has, throughout history, been a weapon of war.

Anyone who has ever met or talked to women from Bosnia, Kosavo, Vietnam, Cambodia, or the survivors of WW2 from China, Poland, France...not a comprehensive list because the list is extensive...knows this truth.

The situation in Congo is exactly the same as the situation in South Africa where the youngest victim I personally encountered was 4 months old, while the oldest was in her mid eighties. It has already contributed to the fact that the majority of the population is HIV positive.

It seems that only when this truth is pushed in our faces by people like Lucy does it ever hit us where we live. Even then, there are those who find it so unpalatable that they deny, seek to denigrate, shift blame or dismiss.

The nay-sayers are usually those who have no direct experience of this truth so the value of people like Lucy telling their stories is inestimable.

I have never met a soldier from a contemporary conflict who denies this truth either. It is just not talked about in the public arena in the way Lucy and others are doing.

Rape is part and parcel of the whole reason for the agression in the first place. The male is doing what males are biologically programmed to do. Defend and TAKE territory. They do not like the offspring of unrelated bloodlines on their territory. They kill all males including boy children and rape all the females thus once more bringing the whole territory under their control.

Male lion cubs of a different father are very nervous around a new male who takes control of the pride and as soon as possible leave the pride for fear of being killed by the new male. I'm not excusing the behaviour I'm just telling it like it is.

Raping babies and 20men rapes is just appalling ignorance of how the female anatomy works.