Rape and Genocide: Not Just Perpetrated by Men.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents allege that a women now residing in New Hampshire committed acts of rape and murder while living in her native Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Although these charges are highly controversial, the fact that women can be party to such acts of cruelty on the battlefield should not be surprising given that female soldiers/combatants are often socialized in the same manner as their male counter parts. Whether it is during the Balkan conflict, wars in sub-Saharan Africa, or Abu Ghraib female soldiers have utilized sexual violence. Noted psychologist Brett Kahr was not surprised by the actions committed by the men or women stationed at Abu Ghraib as in his estimation after thousands of interviews conducted regarding sexual fantasy "The crimes of Lynndie England may be regarded as concretization - an explicitization- of the very same acts the one can find as a mainstay of ordinary American and British sexual fantasy life". The war, in conjunction with reinforcement of the behavior as being normative gave them license to do that which they had only previously thought about.