This paper adds to the extant literature on both sexual violence and war crimes by providing an exploratory empirical examination of victim accounts of rapes associated with widespread civil or military violence. The widespread social disorder during the genocide provided individuals with the impunity to engage in sexual violence. Rape was as much of a weapon for the enactment of the anti-Tutsi genocide as were guns and machetes. Cases tended to involve groups of perpetrators, were encouraged if not ordered by field commanders, and were accompanied by the ethicists language and motivations of the broader genocide. The goal was clearly to kill many of the women, either in the immediate act of the rape itself or by leaving them to die of their injuries. Those who survived experienced social rejection and continued humiliation as well as physical and psychological trauma. Data were collected from court records of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). References and appendix