UGANDA: Aciro Betty was abducted at the age of 14. Rebels killed her father and torched her home but she and a brother managed to flee into the bush. They hid for a day and a night before risking a fleeting visit home to collect food and water.
Their gamble did not pay off. Rebels were lying in wait for stragglers.
Her brother died in captivity and Aciro was to spend six long years as the unwilling "wife" of a senior Lord's Resistance Army officer.
The nine-month baby boy wriggling in her arms is the result of the series of rapes.
"I have recovered now," she says at the reception centre in Pajule camp, where returning women and children are offered two good meals a day and plenty of support as they readjust to civilian life.
"When I look at him now," she says holding up the baby, "it no longer reminds me of the man."
At first she travelled with the commander, plodding mile and mile through the Ugandan bush. After two years, she was left in one of the LRA's bases in southern Sudan.
Aciro was one of three women raped repeatedly by the commander during his leave from Uganda.
"These men were horrible men and it seems they had psychological torture in their minds. Sometimes they were good but sometimes they were evil and the most difficult thing was knowing what to expect and making sure you didn't anger them."
Refusing sex, she says, always earned a beating. Some women died.
Aciro herself carries the thick scars of a beating received after an escape attempt. After that she kept her head down, earning more rights and responsibilities, until January when she slipped away, walking day and night with her newborn baby to reach home.
Human rights workers say most women will never escape the psychological burden of their time in captivity - sleepless nights and guilt are the norm - but at least Aciro has the comfort of knowing that she has not contracted HIV.
"There's no food, I have no parents and no husband but at least I am home," she says.