During the 1994 genocide, over one hundred thousand Rwandan women were subjected to massive sexual violence, perpetrated by members of the infamous Hutu militia groups known as the Interhamwe. Among the survivors, the most isolated are the women who have borne children as a result of being raped. Due to the stigma of rape and “having a child of the militia,” the communities and few surviving relatives of these women have largely shunned them. In February of 2006, Jonathan Torgovnik traveled to East Africa to report on a story for Newsweek, coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. While in Rwanda, he heard the testimony of Odette, a survivor who was raped during the Rwandan genocide, and as a result of the rape had a child and contracted HIV/AIDS. She described how her entire family had been killed, and recounted the terrible abuse she experienced. Odette’s horrific story led Torgovnik to return to Rwanda to work on a personal project about women like Odette, who were the victims of the same heinous crimes and who were left pregnant as a result.

Over the next three years, he made repeated visits to photograph these women and their children, and record their heart-wrenching stories. Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape brings together Torgovnik’s powerful stories of these women. The exhibition on view is comprised of twenty-five stunning individual portraits of the women with their children accompanied by their testimonies—intensely personal accounts of the daily challenges they continue to face, and their conflicted feelings about raising a child who is a reminder of horrors endured.

In March 2019, Torgovnik wrote an article for the New York Times in which he shares portraits of and stories from the women and children of the Intended Consequences series. Read the piece here.

Learn more about Jonathan Torgovnik at www.torgovnik.com