Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told from victims themselves. However, experience of other similar situations shows that it takes time before women are prepared to talk about their experiences. This was also the experience of the OSCE-KVM; while taking statements from the refugees, the officers would come across those who had been the victims of sexual violence that had occurred several months previously. It is therefore important not to see the information below as in any way exhaustive; there is still much work on documenting sexual violence which remains to be done. Having developed the approach mentioned above the OSCE-KVM was able to collect more information than had been expected. In none of the statements that were taken concerning sexual violence was any kind of condemnation articulated, and when family members were reporting the crime against relatives they stood fully behind them. The OSCE-KVM officers thus received several signals that the attitude towards these kinds of crimes is in fact changing. Generally, the OSCEKVM officers received the support of the men in trying to make the women feel secure enough to talk. They would leave the room or the tent and let the OSCE-KVM officers talk to the women in private, and often they would encourage the women to tell the whole story with all details. Rape in women's own homes. Women were not safe in their own homes, as shown by the following example, also from mid-February 1999, of a woman who was raped by one police officer and three civilians in her home while her husband was at work. The woman was four-and-a-half months pregnant at the time. About 21:30 I heard a knock at the door and I asked who it was. There was no answer but there was a knock at the window. I opened. There were three men in civilian clothes and one armed [police officer]. I screamed. They said they were looking for someone. I told them that I would call my husband to ask about who they were looking for. The policeman grabbed my hand and said in the Serbian language "We don't need your husband." Immediately the three civilians pushed me by force back into the apartment. Two civilians pushed me inside a room, one went into my children's room and the policeman stayed outside guarding the house. The two civilians ripped off my clothes. I begged them not to rape me, all four of them. They forced me to have oral sex. When I tried to refuse they beat me. They raped me in different ways. When they had finished they invited the other two in. Before the two others entered I took a wooden stick and tried to defend myself, but I was too weak. I tried to break the windows to get outside. But they stopped me and tied my hands on the back and put something in my mouth to stop me from shouting … They pushed me down, one sat on my legs and the other on my chest. I tried to refuse, but they gave me something to drink [and] I don't know any more what happened to me. I know only at one moment I had a terrible pain in my stomach and felt something metal inside my stomach. I don't know what exactly. … I don't know what time they left, I only know that at some point my children were crying on my body but I couldn't move. When my husband came home [the next morning, at 08:30] I told him what had happened … The same day he fetched my mother … We http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch7.htm (3 of 17)12/5/2003 11:51:55 AM