Even in Walungu there is no sanctuary for Vincienne, as the HIV she contracted from the rapists has begun to ravage her young body.

Even in Walungu there is no sanctuary for Vincienne, as the HIV she contracted from the rapists has begun to ravage her young body. Codilusi, a local agency funded by SCIAF, is helping her with anti-retroviral medicine. Most victims, like Sifa, do not make it to medical care within the 72-hour deadline for receiving HIV prevention treatment, and even if they could, the medical centres have few or no post-exposure prophylaxis (Pep) kits.

In the rural hospitals that are, in comparison, relatively well equipped, doctors tell us there are insufficient resources to treat the hundreds of women who require complex operations for fistula and other rape-related injuries. Many are left incontinent. Women queue for weeks to get on the waiting list for Panzi, the one fully funded hospital for rape victims in Bukavu. It is a haven for victims and provides free care, but such centralisation means attention is often diluted dangerously in the outlying areas. SCIAF is working with Codilusi to provide better health care for women nearer to their homes.

Sifa says she cannot forgive these men. More than anything she wants to earn enough money to pay for her children's food and education. Children born of rape have no legal rights: unless they can persuade a male family member to give them their surname and go through the courts to secure the requisite legal paperwork, they are not even allowed to attend school.

Age is no boundary here. Counsellors at the listening centres of Kaniola and Walungu have seen victims aged between two months and 80. Up to half the victims are under the age of 18. Assaults on the very old and very young are often blamed on the orders of witch doctors - sorcerors who feed on superstitions brokered in the jungle over millennia. Women talk in whispers of men ordered to rape young virgins in order to "cure" them of Aids.

Josephine Mapendo was six years old when soldiers broke into her house in the night near Kaniola and raped her and her mother, before beating her four-year-old brother to death. Her mother died of the injuries, leaving her orphaned.

"I was so afraid," she whispers. "After they left it was so quiet. My mother was very still. I did not move. Some days later she died."

Four years on, Josephine still visits the listening centre once a week to talk to the counsellors. They say that until recently she barely spoke and never smiled.

For all the children like Josephine who have lost their parents and their innocence, there are as many women here who have lost their offspring and ability to have more. Small families are frowned upon. Giving birth to a girl, particularly twins, is most fortuitous as the men explain women work harder and their eventual groom has to pay "bride price" to the family which could be one goat or 10.

Antoinette M'Hongo, 30, is visibly disappointed that she has only two children. She says she hopes to have more but four years ago when rebel leader Laurent Nkunda's militia attacked Bukavu and the surrounding area, two of his soldiers, men who claim to be protecting the Tutsi population in DRC, rammed sticks inside her vagina and raped her so violently she had to have a hysterectomy.

"I could see my insides coming out and water kept running," she says. "I spent a month in hospital. They said I had almost died. I told them I wanted to have more children but I have not been able to."

At Central Prison in Bukavu dozens of men are banging on the metal bars, shouting demands for food, drink and cigarettes. Inside the crumbling blue walls of the compound others mill about unrestricted. Just one set of iron bars prevents the hundreds of men from escaping, and the single flimsy-looking gate swings open with alarming regularity while women and children walk in and out alone. Riots and escapes are regular occurrences. It is easy to see why. In 2004 when Nkunda's troops invaded, the prison emptied.

Lieutenant Anzolima Adu, 58, is serving three years here for raping a 12-year-old girl. Despite his crime it is difficult not to feel some pity for this emaciated figure, a war veteran with 43 years' service in the Congolese army. There are no catering facilities inside the prison, and food is mostly delivered by family members. Adu's family live hundreds of miles away and he has not eaten for two days. Three years might not sound long, but it could prove to be a life sentence.

"I know what I did was bad," he says, his eyes milky and downcast. "I feel so much remorse but I was so drunk. I cannot say for sure why so many soldiers rape. Some have been in the bush for so long they do not know the difference between right and wrong. They are so isolated. When they see a woman unable to defend herself they take her by force. It is ultimately a kind of destruction."

Adu is a rare creature. Official figures suggest only 1-2% of the 14,000 cases reported last year made it to court. In the neighbouring area of Uvira figures suggest that some 40% of those given custodial sentences did not reach the prison gates. The UN estimates that in some areas 80% of alleged rapists are released on bail and never return to court.

"Even if we do get people to court, many of the perpetrators simply bribe the judge or the prosecutors," explains Toto Manimani, one of the lawyers who volunteers with AJV, an agency that tries to get victims through the courts. "Those who do get sent to court often escape.The most important thing is to tackle the issue of impunity. People need to know they will be punished whoever they are and whatever rank they hold. There have been soldiers of senior rank that the army has tried to refuse to hand over but we have managed to take them to court. We need the international community to help remove the Interahamwe and pressure the Congolese government into improving the justice system."