Securing justice seems a distant dream, but there are cases to prove it is not impossible. One of AJV�s most high-profile cases was against a Congolese army captain.

Securing justice seems a distant dream, but there are cases to prove it is not impossible. One of AJV's most high-profile cases was against a Congolese army captain. Getting him to court, however, was not easy. Transport here is so problematic that in the rainy season many of the villages are cut off. The rural roads could barely be defined as mud tracks. Travelling by boat is often the safest and easiest option, and Bukavu and the villages on the eastern side of the DRC are flanked by Lake Kivu, 1000sq miles of methane-rich brown water where only small fish survive.

When Furaha Baswira was raped by Captain Alanda Mbelenga in her home village of Birava, the lake was the only way out. Her story begins at 7pm on December 3, 2006. It had been raining since midday, the way was slippery and the sky dark. She was walking home from the market, carrying on her head the tomatoes she had not sold that day to make dinner for her husband and two children. She was six months pregnant. Suddenly two armed soldiers barred her way. They claimed it was illegal to walk about after dark. It was not. Such is the impunity here, one soldier raped her in the middle of the road.

"They tied my hands and ripped off my skirt and stuffed it into my mouth," she says. "Many people were there and they tried to plead for me but the captain had a gun and threatened them. I was in a lot of pain. It was muddy and difficult to walk but my neighbour held my hand and helped me. When I got home my husband would not accept me. The next morning soldiers were sent out and caught the man."

Two days later Furaha, 29, was forced to take a local pirogue - an oversized wooden canoe - with the perpetrator sitting just two feet in front of her. It took three hours to travel the 20-mile stretch from Birava to Bukavu. As the prow slid up the muddy beach and the puttering of the engine cut out, Mbelenga leapt off, ran across the bundles of fishing nets and into the trees.

"It was frightening sitting so close to him, then he escaped," she says. "My husband went to Maria Radio to explain what had happened and I had to spend a month in Panzi hospital where they treated the injuries."

After her name had been broadcast in public - there is no anonymity for the victims here - Furaha spoke to the lawyers at AJV and they said they would take the case. Mbelenga was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $15,000. "The captain denied everything but there were many witnesses," she says. "Waiting to go through court I was very afraid. The captain threatened to send soldiers to kill me but someone from AJV always accompanied me. There were so many delays and every day when we went to court they would say the judge or the witnesses were not available. Now the captain is in Central Prison, but I am still afraid when I think about it. I feel so angry."

The military court in Bukavu looks more like a haunted house than a courtroom. Mbelenga's is one of the most high-profile cases the court has dealt with. Since he is a Congolese soldier the government should have paid the compensation to the victim, but none has yet been handed over.

The Congolese government has pledged to establish a compensation fund for victims. It contains little more than $5000, the average compensation for just one victim. "I had to spend all my savings on the time I spent receiving medical treatment," says Furaha. "Now I have nothing to restart my business of selling tomatoes. I don't blame the government but I do think it is their duty to pay the comp-ensation. I blame the man who raped me. I don't know why he did it. I can only think he was not educated."

Furaha is fortunate that her husband, unlike thousands of others, has stayed with her. Felicien Safari Mugisho, 30, says he and his wife separated for a year until they knew she had not contracted HIV, but they are now back together. "When she told me what had happened I was so emotional I was unable to move or talk," he explains quietly as we walk down to the pirogues, reconstructing the journey they took with Mbelenga in 2006. "In the boat it was hard to sit still with my enemy so close. The judgment does not change what happ-ened. The compensation cannot heal the scar, but it would help to clean the would in my heart that has been left by what happened."

That Furaha was able to take her case through the courts should provide hope to the tens of thousands of other victims. She has suffered physically and mentally, lost her capital and been paid no compensation, but she can at least say there has been some modicum of justice.

The message the women leave us with is a Congolese proverb: when your neighbour's house is on fire you must do your best to help, you cannot just watch it burn. As Furaha walks away from the tiny port in Birava and turns her back on the route she took across the brackish brown waters of Lake Kivu to reach justice more than 18 months ago, Justine, the baby she was pregnant with at the time, begins a contagious chuckle. Furaha laughs with her.

There is so much healing to do, but perhaps her journey over the waters of Lake Kivu has started to cleanse her wounds.