UK's Cardinal O'Brien with SCIAF in the Sudan sees hope amid horror of African nightmare

'THE men had their ears cut off - cut right into the skull. One said he had been stripped and beaten. Another had also had his lips cut off, you could see the scars. He told me stories of other people who had had their lips padlocked. Man's inhumanity to man is quite startling."

Cardinal Keith O'Brien's frank and graphic response when asked what hit him hardest during a recent visit to Sudan brings home the horrific abuses suffered by thousands of people in the war-ravaged African country.

But the Cardinal believes there is hope, with projects run by Sciaf and other charities providing crucial help to people whose lives remain devastated by the war.

He says: "I saw women getting their hair done and their feet painted by hairdressers who are also trained psychologists.

"It is only when they get a woman's confidence when they are washing her hair that they can get her to communicate and reveal something of what has happened to her. These women have suffered multiple rapes, but under Sudanese law marital infidelity is a crime. Women also need four witnesses in any allegation of rape, and eight if the witnesses are women too."

Full report by Julia Horton (Scotsman) 20 Feb 2006.