SCRIPT:Congo: Peace at What Price?

Feb. 11, 2005 — -- This story aired on "20/20."

Now an investigation that is sure to send shockwaves around the world. This is a story of betrayal and abuse, of men working for the United Nations as so-called peacekeepers, preying on the very people they're supposed to be helping. Tonight, "20/20" Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross takes you into the African Congo and into the heart of darkness.

BRIAN ROSS, ABC NEWS

Saturday night in the Congo. In a country ravaged by war, it's still a party night. At least for members of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent, arriving at a place of drinks, dancing and plenty of prostitutes. A place where desperately poor women offer themselves for sex to the UN personnel sent to protect them. Oral sex is just $2 here, even less elsewhere in town. It's what human rights investigators call survival sex.

ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

We have heard cases where they have traded eggs for sex or bread for sex or a jar of peanut butter for sex.

BRIAN ROSS

A jar of peanut butter for sex?

ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG

Yep.

BRIAN ROSS

Paying for sex with food or cash is strictly prohibited by UN rules. Even being in a place where prostitutes are available is supposedly prohibited. But by 1:00 AM, we saw several young women loaded into UN vehicles and driven away. One example, on one night of what a "20/20" investigation found to be a much larger pattern of misconduct, sexual exploitation and worse, by UN personnel in the Congo.

ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG

This has become one of the very nasty side effects of having peacekeepers in the Congo.

BRIAN ROSS

Anneke van Woudenberg went to UN refugee camps in the Congo to investigate for the group Human Rights Watch.

ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG

The UN is for their protection. So when the protectors become violators this is particularly grievous, this is particularly bad.

BRIAN ROSS

What we found in this central African country, a century after colonial rulers first victimized it, includes widespread allegations of the rapes of young Congolese girls by UN troop, including this 14- year-old. An Internet pedophile ring, run out of the Congo by a UN official from France. Wide-open prostitution, just outside the gates of UN camps. A lieutenant colonel from South Africa, accused of sexually molesting his teenage male translator. And an estimated hundreds of underage girls with abandoned babies, fathered by UN troops who've been able to simply leave their children and their crimes behind.

ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG

There is almost no peacekeeper who has been held accountable and who's had to face the courts because of what they have done.

BRIAN ROSS

UN Peacekeeping troops first came to Congo five years ago to stop a raging border war. Men from countries including Uruguay, Morocco, Pakistan and South Africa. The UN does no background checks on these men and they are exempt from prosecution in the Congo. The first reports of sex crimes began within a year of their arrival.

WILLIAM SWING, UN PEACEKEEPING MISSION

It pains us all. It's absolutely odious and we're determined to wipe it out.

BRIAN ROSS

The head of the UN Peacekeeping mission in the Congo is a former American Ambassador, William Swing. Swing says he is determined to end the sexual exploitation. But he describes it as a problem only recently brought to his attention. And he claims only a small percentage of the 11,000 UN troops here are involved.