1 September 1919 · Haitian
A marine rapes a girl on the Gonaïves road and leaves one gourde
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At dusk on 1 September 1919 Eleanor Charles and her mother Elizabeth Saint-Bernard were walking home from the market at Gonaïves with the produce they had not sold, six miles of road between the town and Petite Rivière des Bayonnais. Near the iron bridge on the Saint Marc road Private Edward Paul Pietszak pulled up beside them in a car and told them to get in. Both women ran. Pietszak caught the girl, and she testified that he dragged her into the bushes at the roadside. She dropped the produce. Her dress and her skin were torn. When he had finished he put one gourde into her cut and bruised hand, which allowed him to describe what had happened as a purchase. Saint-Bernard petitioned the court for a hundred gourdes in damages, on the ground that her daughter had lost her reputation and would find it hard to get work. Women who traded in the markets moved in full view of the marines and were the least protected people in the country.
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