13 59. The Commission, too, believed that children were more vulnerable to violations because they did not understand the danger and the mechanics of violence and were deeply affected by the loss of security, trust and the care that they needed for normal growth and development.43 60. For its part, in 2000 the Archdiocese of Guatemala’s Human Rights Office (hereinafter “the ODHAG”) published a study on children who disappeared during the internal armed conflict, in which it estimated that more than 400 children had been forcibly disappeared.44 61. Some children survived the massacres when members of patrols, soldiers or military commissioners decided to take them to their own homes. As the CEH documented: […] in the wake of the massacres or scorched-earth operations, many children who were by then able to take care of themselves were taken by military personnel, military commissioners or patrollers to serve as servants in their own homes or in the homes of other families. Some of these children were systematically exploited and abused. Others were taken into homes where they grew up. Still others were unaware that they were not members of the family with which 45 they lived or still live. 1.2.6. Violence against women 62. The CEH concluded that women accounted for roughly one fourth of the immediate victims of the human rights violations committed during the conflict.46 Likewise, the report of the Archdiocese of Guatemala’s Recovery of Historical Memory Project and the CEH’s own report document the way in which women were insulted and dehumanized, terrorized and tortured, raped, forcibly disappeared and massacred by agents of the State, almost always soldiers and civil self-defense patrol members.47 63. The CEH concluded that sexual violence against women was a widespread and systematic practice within the Army’s counterinsurgency strategy and one of the more specific manifestations of gender violence committed during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala.48 Thus, for example, in 99% of the 1465 cases of rape registered by the CEH, the victim was a woman.49 Likewise, the women who survived had to cope with the physical and psychological aftereffects, including the stigma associated with rape.50 43 IACHR, Fifth Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Guatemala, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.111, approved on April 6, 2001, par. 27. Available at: http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/Guate01eng/chap.12.htm. 44 Annex 5. ODHAG. Hasta Encontrarte: Niñez Desaparecida por el Conflicto Armado Interno en Guatemala [Until You’re Found: Children Disappeared by the Internal Armed Conflict in Guatemala]. Guatemala: ODHAG, 2000, p. 35. Available [in Spanish] at: http://www.odhag.org.gt/pdf/Hasta%20encontrarte.pdf 45 Annex 3. CEH, Memory of Silence, Volume III, Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence, par. 2519. 46 Annex 1. CEH, Memory of Silence, Volume V, Conclusions and Recommendations, par. 29. 47 IACHR, Fifth Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Guatemala, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.111, approved on April 6, 2001, 48 Annex 3. CEH, Memory of Silence, Volume III, Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence, paragraphs 2350-2351. 49 Annex 3. CEH, Memory of Silence, Volume III, Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence, par. 2376. 50 Annex 1. CEH, Memory of Silence, Volume V, Conclusions and Recommendations, par. 91. par. 42.