Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

Now online are several powerful stories PBS has been airing on the Democratic Republic of Congo, putting a human face on statistics impossible to fathom: a decade of civil war that has killed some five million people, left two hundred thousand women raped, and displaced a quarter of a million Congolese in the last three months alone.

The first story is Pascal Bumbari's. A 25-year-old father of two, Bumbari and his family were displaced twice within a year, his wife Vestine giving birth on their tent's mud floor in a makeshift camp housing over 20,000 other displaced people. After the story aired, they were forced to flee again, and Pascal's family can't be located.

The second story is Georgina's, one of an estimated 200,000 women raped in the Congo. As is common here, when her husband, Andre, found out that three soldiers had raped her as she tried to collect firewood, he left her, saying he was mocked by his friends and that he was afraid she now had a disease.

A separate online exclusive focuses on an organization that reunites couples like Georgina and Andre, in addition to offering much-needed social, medical and psychological support.

It's a testament to the journalists that these stories got aired at all; as video journalist Taylor Krauss describes on the Worldfocus blog, nearly all their tapes were confiscated when they were detained by the notorious Congolese secret police. Fortunately, Krauss had thought ahead.

On the way to headquarters, I had hidden the “money” tape — with footage of the United Nations jungle patrols — deep in my bag’s “secret pocket,” and I had just reviewed it.

“Fend for yourself,” the Congolese creed, had come in handy. We were lucky. Since that time, reporting has become even more difficult and dangerous.