The Taylor-Burton "Diamonds have no mercy... "They will show up the wearer if they can," says one character in The Sandcastle, an early novel by the famous British author, Iris Murdoch. Now this may be true of some women - usually wearing an outrageously large item of jewelry which imparts a degree of unwholesome vulgarity to themselves - but is it applicable to Elizabeth Taylor? Those well-publicized gifts which she received from her fifth husband, the late Richard Burton, certainly enhance her appearance and do not look out of place on her. A compatibility is established between the jewel and its wearer...."

Amputation is Forever"Mani, forty-eight, watched as a commander ordered the execution of seven civilians and then singled him out for amputation on January 21.
He said:
A group of thirteen rebels came to my house, poured kerosene on the furniture and then set it ablaze. I stumbled out of my house and started running up the street but was immediately caught by a group of ten rebels. The ordered me to join a group of seven other people from my neighborhood.
The commander, who introduced himself as a Liberian, then ordered everyone but me to stand to one side and said, "I'm going to kill you all, so say good-bye to the world." He kept them there begging for three minutes and then at 7:03 p.m. I looked at my watch ordered another rebel to open fire on them.
Then, the same Liberian said, "I'm ordered and paid by Sam Bockerie not to spare anyone and that is why I have killed. You saw it with your own eyes. But now I am ordering your hand to be cut." He ordered me to lay face down in the road and called forward a rebel with an axe who then hacked off my hand. It was hanging off limp and bleeding and when I saw it I started to cry. The rebels just walked away.56"

Rape is ForeverJoy
"On January 7, Joy, seventeen, witnessed five girls who attempted to escape a rebel base in which they had all been raped, being killed. She said:
I was captured in the morning with five other girls about my age and taken to a house full of rebels in Kissy. They took me into a room, pointed a pistol at my head, and told me it I didn't submit to them I would be shot. They were all high on drugs and drinking beer. Five of them used me that day.
At around 6:00 p.m. the one who'd captured me took me out on the verandah and there I found the five others who were crying and I could see at least two of them were bleeding. They said it had happened to them as well but we couldn't really talk because there was a rebel with a gun next to us. Some minutes later our guard left to get something and the girls got up and ran but the rebels saw them and opened up on them. There was gunfire all around and I crouched in the corner crying. I was so afraid they would kill me as well. I ran to the rebel who had captured me, told him I'd not run away and begged him to protect me. They fell just a few meters from the house. I saw their bodies. I don't know why they ran that day.80

The health repercussions of the sexual abuse are many. Most victims under twenty reported considerable bleeding during and after the rape, something gynecologists treating them attribute in part to complications produced by the practice of female genital cutting which is widespread in Sierra Leone.81 One gynecologist reported treating every victim aged between eight to twelve for some degree of vaginal tearing.82 According to medical personnel and testimonies taken by Human Rights Watch, at least fourteen girls and young women, including one thirteen-year-old, became pregnant from the sexual assault. Health practitioners treating the victims also report a high percentage of them diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Yet another medical implication involves the spread of HIV-AIDS. One twenty-two-year-old woman who was abducted in early January and gang-raped and sodomized repeatedly over a period of two months, was during her captivity already suffering from full blown AIDS, and has since died of AIDS-related illness.83
Victims of sexual abuse frequently reported female rebels having taken part in rounding up operations and often singling out girls and women for their commanders. Once in captivity, girls frequently reported appealing to female rebels for help. However their pleas were ignored and often met with threats of violence. One sixteen-year-old victim described how a female commander entered the room in which she was being raped and said, why are you hollering. These are my boys and you will not refuse them. 84
Human Rights Watch took testimony from one sixteen-year-old girl who described sexual abuse by a female rebel, who forced her and another sixteen-year-old girl to undress, and then tied them up and proceeded to insert her fingers into their vaginas.85
The motive of the attackers, according to what they told the victims, was both to be rewarded for having endured hardship in the bush and to punish their victims for supporting the current government or having sexually accommodated ECOMOG soldiers. The abuses are consistent with a long-standing pattern of RUF use of rape as one of many weapons to intimidate, terrorize, and ultimately control the civilian population.

The rebels sought not only to control and degrade their victims but also to undermine and degrade the authority of the family and community. The victims described feeling terror, humiliation, and shame, and their parents, husbands, and community elders described feeling powerless at their inability to protect them."