Papal honour to war rape heroine

Sydney
4 August 2002

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Papal honour to war rape heroine

By Johanna Bennett

As a teenager she was made a sex slave of the Japanese military, a so-called ‘comfort woman’.

Later she helped make rape a war crime under the Geneva Convention and last week she was awarded a papal honour.

Mrs Jan Ruff-O’Herne, a Dutchwoman who emigrated to South Australia after World War II, was made a Dame Commander of the Order of St Sylvester – the second highest papal honour – for her advocacy of women imprisoned and abused in war, something she knows far too much about herself.

She is also the first Australian woman to be so honoured.

The young Jan was imprisoned by the Japanese military in Indonesia, where her family was living when war broke out.

Along with other young Dutch women, she was forced to serve the sexual needs of Japanese soldiers. She was just 19.

Her faith and prayers – which she shared with her fellow prisoners – helped see her through her terrible three-and-half-year ordeal, she said.

“Without my faith I would never have survived the atrocities done to me during the war.”

But her life did turn around eventually when she married one of the young English soldiers who rescued her from otherwise certain death in the Indonesian prison camp where she was confined.

Late in life Mrs Ruff-O’Herne took the brave decision to reveal her terrible past, using her story to lobby for rape to be made a war crime.

When she heard of her papal honour, a delighted Mrs Ruff-O'Herne said: “What could be better than this? You can’t expect a higher or better award as a Catholic.”

She received the honour for her outstanding Christian virtue and faith when confronted with systematic sexual abuse, and for her unfailing loyalty to the Church and for her personal holiness.

“The Church has been my whole life and helped me to survive it all,” said the woman who had wanted to be a nun before her prison ordeal, but was instead blessed with a happy marriage and two daughters.

Last year the energetic 78-year-old was awarded the prestigious Orde van Oranje Nassua by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for her 10 years of work raising public awareness of rape in war and her efforts to stop women being treated as ‘spoils of war’.

Presenting Mrs Ruff-O’Herne with her papal honour last week, Adelaide’s Archbishop Philip Wilson said the honour was a visible sign of our connection with the Universal Church.