Mission of sacrifice
Peace Corps volunteers face injury, death in foreign lands
By Russell Carollo and Mei-Ling Hopgood
AGUA FRIA, El Salvador | On a clear Christmas night near a moonlit stretch of Pacific beach, a man with a pistol came from the darkness and forced Diana Gilmour to watch two of her fellow Peace Corps volunteers being gang-raped while a male volunteer was pinned helpless on the ground.
One of the men — his breath reeking of alcohol — raped Gilmour, too. Then the attackers herded the volunteers at gunpoint to a field of high grass where they feared they would be executed.
"I was constantly waiting to hear a shot in the dark," Gilmour said.
Suddenly another volunteer approached with a flashlight, and the attackers fled.
Seven months later in neighboring Guatemala, on July 2, 1997, the same two volunteers Gilmour had watched being gang-raped that Christmas night were walking from the Magic Place movie theater in downtown Guatemala City when they were attacked by another group of armed men intent on raping them. One of the women fled; the other was abducted and, for a second time in seven months, gang-raped while serving in the Peace Corps.
"They put a white T-shirt over my head and told me if I uncovered my face they would kill me," the 25-year-old volunteer said in a written statement filed in a Guatemalan court. "He put the end of the pistol in my mouth and cocked it, and I waited for them to kill me."
Six days after that incident, another Guatemala volunteer reported being raped. Twenty-seven days later, another. Twenty-nine days later, another.
Last year, Guatemala volunteers reported 11 assaults of all types, the largest number since the Peace Corps began collecting statistics in 1990, and the number this year is on pace to be even higher.
Records from a never-before-released computer database show that reported assault cases involving Peace Corps volunteers increased 125 percent from 1991-2002, while the number of volunteers increased by 29 percent, according to the Peace Corps. Last year, the number of assaults and robberies averaged one every 23 hours.
The Dayton Daily News spent 20 months examining thousands of records on assaults on Peace Corps volunteers occurring around the world during the past four decades.
Reporters interviewed more than 500 people in 11 countries and filed more than 75 Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals, obtaining thousands of documents and computer records made public for the first time. Many of the records were obtained in other countries, and others were released only after the newspaper sued the Peace Corps in U.S. District Court in Dayton.
The examination found that young Americans — many just out of college and the majority of them women — are put in danger by fundamental practices of the Peace Corps that have remained unchanged for decades.
Though many volunteers have little or no experience traveling outside the United States, minimum language skills and virtually no background in their assigned jobs, they are sent to live alone in remote areas of some of the world's most dangerous countries and left unsupervised for months at a time.
In 62 percent of the more than 2,900 assault cases since 1990, the victim was identified as being alone, according to a Daily News analysis of the Peace Corps’ Assault Notification and Surveillance System database. In 59 percent of assault cases, the victim was identified as a woman in her 20s.
"I am ready to go home. I don't like living in fear every single day," said Michelle Ervin of Buckeye Lake, Ohio, a 1998 University of Dayton graduate who was 25 when the Daily News visited her in the African country of Cape Verde in the summer of 2002. "Every day, I walk out of my house wondering who is going to rob me."
Volunteers frequently arrive at their sites fresh out of training without adequate housing or a job that keeps them busy. Some turn to drinking, using drugs, traveling to unsafe areas and engaging in other activities that put them in danger.
Nearly one in three assaults since 1999 involved alcohol, although the assailant was the only one drinking in some of those cases. Alcohol was linked to nearly one in six deaths since 1962, the Daily News analysis found.
The extent of the dangers faced by volunteers has been disguised for years, partly because the attacks occur thousands of miles away, partly because the agency has made little effort to publicize them, and partly because it has deliberately kept some people from finding out — while emphasizing the positive aspects of Peace Corps service.
Two top agency officials overseeing security over the last 12 years said they warned the Peace Corps about increased dangers to volunteers, but many of their concerns were ignored.
"Nobody wanted to talk about security. It suppresses the recruitment numbers," said Michael O'Neill, the Peace Corps' security director from 1995 to August 2002.
ONeill oversaw millions of dollars in security improvements, including hiring security personnel, buying satellite phones and backup generators and upgrading the security of physical facilities, including offices in foreign posts. But he said the agency ignored his suggestions to re-direct more funds into providing a more secure environment for volunteers in the field.
"I was the security guy. I said this isn't right. You're exposing volunteers and you're exposing the agency," he said.
In 1992, John S. Hale, then the acting inspector general for the Peace Corps, warned in a 43-page report to Congress of "a marked increase in violent acts against volunteers worldwide." Hale said he quit the Peace Corps after working on the report, in part because the agency ignored his warnings of the growing threat to volunteers.
"The idea was to basically return this (Peace Corps) to the land of myth and legacy — not to make sure that this was a good and effective agency that was doing good and keeping people safe," said Hale, whose duties included overseeing security. "People don't want to burst the myth of the culture."
In 10 cases examined by the newspaper, the Peace Corps misled or failed to provide essential details to families, the public or other volunteers about the circumstances of how volunteers died. Several families that lost relatives as many as 30 years ago learned critical details about the deaths from the Dayton Daily News.
"They wouldn't tell us nothing," said Paul Fink, who learned key details about the death of his 22-year-old sister from the Daily News 30 years after her body was found in a river in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush proposed doubling the number of Peace Corps volunteers, emphasizing a presence in Muslim countries. But spending bills now in Congress fall about $45 million short of the $359 million the administration said was needed for the agency to expand.
Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez said his "number one priority" is the safety of the agency's 7,533 volunteers serving in 71 countries.
"We will not put a single volunteer in harm's way," Vasquez said. "We send volunteers only to countries and communities where they can serve safely, and we have systems in place to maximize their safety and security."
Asked about the Daily News analysis showing an increase in assault cases, Vasquez said, "The numbers that I've seen indicate that in the case of the major sexual assaults that the numbers have been down, particularly last year they were down."
Vasquez and other Peace Corps officials stressed that the agency has taken steps during the past few years to make volunteers safer, including reorganizing its safety personnel, providing more training and adding 80 new positions worldwide. The agency also reorganized its Web site to provide more detailed information on safety.
"We've been trending in the right direction," Vasquez said. "I have yet to have one single volunteer say to me, ‘You know, Mr. Director, can I pull you aside because I really don't think things are going in the right direction.’ ” Vasquez said Thursday he is resigning his position, effective Nov. 14, so he can return to California.
The mission of the Peace Corps is to foster world peace and friendship by helping other countries, by telling the world about Americans and by sharing the experience with other Americans. Most of the more than 350 volunteers interviewed by the Daily News, even assault victims, looked favorably on their service. Many felt it was the most significant experience in their lives, giving them a new understanding of the world and leaving them with a new appreciation for the opportunities in the United States.
George Stengren's service in Africa inspired him to teach high school in Harlem. After teaching business skills in the African country of Togo, Tiffany Arthur of Dayton is an analyst in international agricultural trade. Melissa McSwegin of Kettering, who just finished three years as a volunteer, is working to eradicate the debilitating illness known as Guinea Worm disease in Niger.
Other volunteers have gone on to public service, including Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and former U.S. Congressman Tony Hall of Dayton, who continues to champion the cause of hunger around the world as the ambassador to the United Nations’ food relief agencies.
Still, Peace Corps service has left dozens of volunteers with a lifetime of physical and emotional scars. More than 250 have died since 1961, including at least 20 who were murdered, at least 16 who committed suicide and several who died under mysterious circumstances. A volunteer in Bolivia has been missing since 2001.
"I thought the Peace Corps was different from a typical government entity," said Jennifer Petersen, who underwent about 10 facial surgeries during 2 1/2 years after she was beaten with a rock in the African country of Lesotho in 1998.
Petersen, who grew up on a cattle ranch in North Dakota and now lives in Austin, Texas, said she felt abandoned by the Peace Corps after returning to the United States. She doesn't recall being contacted by the agency to prosecute her attacker, who was never convicted.
"I was expecting some support from them," she said. "I got nothing."
That same year, Lesotho volunteers were evacuated amid growing violence and political instability, and the following year assault cases involving volunteers doubled. Peace Corps records show that from 1997-99, Lesotho had the second highest rate of serious assaults among Peace Corps' African countries, and in January 2000 a volunteer there was shot in the abdomen and nearly killed.
Harvey Ramseur, former country director and the highest-ranking Peace Corps official in Lesotho from 1994-1999, said he didn't remember the attack on Petersen.
"We didn't experience any instances where volunteers were necessarily in danger," he said.
IVORY COAST VIOLENCE ENDS IN VOLUNTEER'S DEATH
Kevin Leveille of Ventura, Calif., earned minimum wage delivering pizzas in high school but somehow found a way to donate money to homeless shelters and environmental causes.
Weeks after graduating with honors from Humboldt State University in California, Leveille joined the Peace Corps and was sent to the town of Tanda in the Ivory Coast, where he was burglarized as many as three times.
"Kevin had reported that to the Peace Corps, and he had reported it to the local police department," Kevin's father, Paul, said during an interview. "From what I understand, the Peace Corps didn't do anything."
On Feb. 5, 1998, Kevin was burglarized once more. This time he was beaten to death.
"If I had any idea what was going on, I would have been over there so fast," Paul Leveille said. "I didn't find this out until after he was murdered."
A 21-year-old refrigerator repairman Kevin had once helped was sentenced to life in prison for his murder. Two others were found not guilty.
Kevin's murder was among a string of tragedies involving his group of about 40 volunteers in the Ivory Coast.
Another volunteer attached to the group died in an automobile accident. One was raped. One was stalked for weeks and burglarized twice. One terminated her service after she was brought out of the country twice for medical emergencies. Two were in serious bus accidents, in which one of them was severely injured. Others were burglarized or robbed.
Still others, though not physically harmed, had problems, too.
As is the case with many volunteers, Kelly Callahan of Kettering said she arrived at her village, Kouassi-Eatearo, without a place to live. The mayor invited her to stay at his home and, said Callahan, also invited her to share his bed.
Sheva Nickravesh had a host family that stole from her, three dogs were mysteriously killed and she was harassed by someone banging on her roof at night. She fled her house one night when a man tried to break in, and another time a group of young boys harassed her, suggesting they could rape her.
Twice she came home to find spitting cobras in her house. Though she has no idea how they got inside, she suspects someone put them there.
"I was constantly letting the Peace Corps know that I didn't feel safe and what was going on," said Nickravesh of San Francisco. "I asked to be transferred to a different village early on, within the first three months that I was there, but they wouldn't do it. In retrospect, I probably should have left when I didn't feel safe in the beginning."
In July 1998, Kelley Hartlieb of Anchorage, Alaska, was walking along the beach near her motel in the city of Tabou when a man attempted to rape her.
"He just came right up and grabbed my dress and started flinging me around and punched me in the face and got me down on the sand," Hartlieb said. "He had a long vine of rope. He was telling me . . . he was going to use it to strangle me."
The Peace Corps sent Hartlieb to Washington, D.C., for medical and psychological treatment. She does not know if her attacker was caught. The Peace Corps initially showed her photographs of suspects, but she could not identify any of them. She said she heard nothing more about the investigation.
"I never got follow-up," she said.
Two months after Hartieb was sexually assaulted, another Ivory Coast volunteer was raped, Peace Corps records show.
"That particular group had a lot of things happen to them. It's almost uncanny," said Sachiko Goode, who as country director oversaw Peace Corps operations in the Ivory Coast. "I've got pictures embedded in my mind that will never leave.
"I had to identify the body (of Kevin Leveille). I had to help with the funeral arrangements," Goode said, choking back tears as she spoke on the telephone. "It lives with me in terms of every day for the rest of my life because of the things that happened."
Goode said she became aware of the other burglaries only after Kevin was murdered and that she didn't recall him asking for a site change. Generally, she said, a volunteer who gets burglarized several times wouldn't have trouble getting moved. Late last year, the Peace Corps pulled all of its volunteers out of Ivory Coast following fighting between government forces and rebel groups.
"If we knew in training that two of us would die and so many would be attacked and raped and stolen from, how many of us would have seen it through?" Hartlieb said. "It seems like the statistics are so high, there really should be more obligation from the administration to give some more talk of awareness of that kind of thing."
END OF PART ONE |
