Healing Haiti

by Sherry Karabin

Within months of the massive earthquake that struck Haiti last January, San Francisco attorney Jayne E. Fleming—long known for her humanitarian legal work—was on a plane to Port-au-Prince to help survivors after raising $15,000 to fund a team of volunteer doctors, psychiatrists, and lawyers.

Once there, Fleming discovered that the circumstances for women and girls were especially dire. Numerous female survivors she met had suffered rape around the time of the quake. (A University of Michigan post-disaster survey of Port-au-Prince households estimates that more than 10,000 people were sexually assaulted in the capital in the six-week period following the quake.)

As pro bono counsel for Reed Smith, Fleming has since initiated a number of efforts to assist Haitian rape victims and their children. She says their situation is made worse by the lack of legal infrastructure in Haiti, which has left room for the human trafficking and prostitution of girls and women. In addition, Fleming has joined the Rule of Law Project, launched last month by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which will advocate for new Haitian laws to better protect women and children from sexual violence.

Fleming also spearheaded the Reed Smith Haiti Project, which will create protocols for journalists and medics working in Haiti to ensure that these practitioners don't inadvertently re-traumatize rape victims or invade their privacy.

Another legal strategy Fleming has adopted is seeking humanitarian parole for 52 Haitian women, girls, and a few men, most of whom have been raped. Such status allows foreign residents with medical and safety concerns to temporarily live in the United States. Attorneys at firms such as O'Melveny & Myers, Hogan Lovell, and Morrison & Foerster have visited Haiti with Fleming, and they have taken on their own humanitarian-parole cases. Though none of Fleming's clients have received this designation yet, one client with breast cancer obtained a medical visa in October to undergo treatment in New York.

Beyond her legal work, Fleming has raised more than $50,000 to create eight safe houses and provide medical care for rape survivors and their families. She also started a literacy program in Haiti, enrolling 180 women as of November.

Fleming plans more trips to Haiti in the future. "I will continue to return to Haiti for as long as women need us there," she says.

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