That’s the headline from Reuters, and its starkness is almost compulsory in light of the story behind the portrait.

The woman below, Joseline Ingabire, is embracing her second daughter Leah, conceived after months of repeated rapes, while her first daughter Hossiana, with whom she was pregnant when the rapes began, looks on. The photo was taken as part of a series of interviews and portraits with thousands of Rwandan rape victims, the series is called “Intended Consequences: mothers of genocide, children of rape”.

An undated handout photo shows the winning entry in The National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize 2007, the results of which were announced on November 6, 2007. The photo taken by Jonathan Torgovnik, who was born in Israel and later moved to New York, is titled “Joseline Ingabire with her daughter Leah Batamuliza, Rwanda” and shows Joseline embracing her second daughter, while her first daughter, Hossiana, is shown in the background, standing in front of the stark, simple structure of their mud-walled home. Joseline, a victim of rape during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is photographed with her two children who were born at the height of the conflict.

REUTERS/Jonathan Torgovnik/Handout

The whole story is here.

Since work began on the Intended Consequences project in February 2006, Torgovnik has set up Foundation Rwanda (www.foundationrwanda.org) to provide funding for the secondary school education of children born from rape during the genocide.

So far he has raised over $180,000 (86,000 pounds) from publishing portraits from the series.

Categories: relationships, violence

Tags: family, rape, relationships, sexual violence, sexuality and health, war