Key findings by the Dayton Daily News
Key findings
Dayton Daily News
Key findings in the Dayton Daily News' 20-month examination of the Peace Corps:
• The Peace Corps puts volunteers in danger by sending them alone to some of the world’s most dangerous countries, where they are unsupervised for months at a time. It took a phone call from a mother in Massachusetts before the Peace Corps realized a volunteer in Bolivia was missing in 2001.
• Violence against volunteers is widespread. Volunteers have died at a rate of one every two months since 1962, and reported assault incidents have more than doubled since 1991.
• Women are a crime target in today’s Peace Corps. About 70 percent of the assault cases involve female volunteers.
• In 10 death cases examined by the newspaper, the Peace Corps misled families, the public or other volunteers about the circumstances of the deaths. "Should not reveal full story," said a State Department record about a volunteer who died of a drug overdose in 1978.
• The Peace Corps masks the danger to volunteers by omitting many victims from published crime statistics. The effect is a crime rate that is artificially low.
• Many volunteers encounter unsafe living conditions at their sites. More than half the volunteers in one country told government examiners that no one from the Peace Corps had inspected their houses before they arrived.
• Volunteers’ own behavior often puts them at risk. Alcohol was identified as a factor in nearly one in three assaults since 1999. In more than half of the reported rapes since 1990, the attacker was identified as a "friend/acquaintance."
• Volunteers, many out of college with little world experience, often have little or no background in the subjects they are expected to teach others. "We were English majors . . . teaching people who have been growing gardens their whole lives how to grow a garden better," said one volunteer describing his experience in Africa.
[From the Dayton Daily News: 10.26.2003]
