only groups. The remaining twenty-five percent of sexual assaults were carried out by mixed sex groups, which indicates that one in four incidents of MPR women had actively participated. HRW reported that "Throughout the nine-year Sierra Leonean conflict there has been widespread and systematic sexual violence against women and girls including individual and gang rape, sexual assault with objects such as firewood, umbrellas and sticks, and sexual slavery," and that "the rebel factions use sexual violence as a weapon to terrorise, humiliate, punish and ultimately control the civilian population into submission.'" Aftermath The violence directed towards women during the conflict was extraordinarily brutal. Militias were indiscriminate about the ages of those assaulted, and there was a marked tendency towards younger women and girls believed to be virgins. Some women were raped with such violence they bled to death following the assault. A report by MSF showed that fifty five per cent of survivors had suffered gang rape, with the attacks usually involving insertion of objects such as knives and burning firewood into the vagina. There were reports of pregnant women being eviscerated with rebels placing wagers on the gender of the unborn child. Thirty four per cent of survivors have reported that they have caught a sexually transmitted disease, and a further fifteen per cent have reported being ostracised by their family's due to having been raped. Six percent reported that they had been forcibly impregnated. Women who had been kidnapped and who had spent years living in the bush have reported severe health problems, such as tuberculosis, malnutrition, malaria, skin and intestinal infections, and respiratory diseases. International and domestic reaction The International Rescue Committee, in conjunction with the Sierra Leone government founded three Sexual Assault Referral Centers (SARC). Locally the SARC project are called "rainbow centers" and they give free psychosocial and medical care as well as offering legal advice. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has singled out the SARC project as a "best-practice gender-based violence program". Post-war trials The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), was founded on 16 January 2002, and at first adopted the definition of rape as laid down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Dragoljub Kunarac case. The prosecutor of the SCSL focused on investigating gender-related crimes, which resulted in the indictment of thirteen people for gender-related violence. In 2007 a trial chamber of the SCSL found