Another harrowing account of wartime sexual violence in Kosovo has come to light, as a survivor publicly shared her traumatic experience during the conflict.
Speaking on Dukagjini Television, the survivor recounted how Serbian forces abducted and raped her while she was accompanying her father to take her ailing mother to the doctor.
“We were together as a family, staying in the same house with others. One morning, my mother’s condition worsened. My father told me to get dressed so we could take her to the doctor. I dressed as a boy to stay unnoticed, but on the way we were stopped by Serbian police. They quickly realized I was a girl and took me,” she said.
Despite desperate efforts by her parents to save her, the girl was forcefully taken away by three masked Serbian police officers and led on foot for about 20 minutes to a remote house. She initially believed they were going to kill her—until she realized the horror that awaited.
“They took me to a room and started undressing me. First one raped me, then the second, then the third. One after the other. They left me lying there until my father and mother came to take me. Maybe they were held in another room—I’ll never know, they never told me, because they were already in so much pain from what happened to me,” she said.
She remained in that room for approximately three hours. When her parents finally retrieved her, they were in tears.
Her parents, traumatized themselves, urged her never to speak of what had happened.
“I stayed alone in a room. My mother was always by my side. My father would come and gently caress me. I cried and cried and cried,” she said, struggling through the retelling of her story.
This testimony adds to the countless voices of women who suffered sexual violence during the war in Kosovo—a crime that has too often gone unrecognized, unacknowledged, and unpunished.
