Civil judgment against Toto Constant

U.S. District Court Judge Sidney H. Stein recently ordered Emanuel “Toto” Constant to pay $19 million to three women who were tortured and raped by FRAPH in Haiti. Constant was the leader of FRAPH, a group that the Haitian army used for its brutal, dirty work during the first coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early 1990s.

Some time after the U.S. Army restored Aristide to power in 1994, Constant moved into a comfortable, single-family home in Laurelton in the Queens borough of New York City.

Although he was wanted in Haiti for mass murder and for participating in the violent overthrow of a legally elected Haitian government, he had no difficulty in obtaining residency and even permission to work in the United States—because, as he admitted on the television show “60 Minutes,” he had been a paid CIA operative while he was running FRAPH.

What is striking about the judge’s ruling is that he at least recognized the atrocities that FRAPH committed and Constant oversaw.

“Constant’s conduct was clearly malicious,” Judge Sidney Stein wrote. He “founded and oversaw an organization that was dedicated principally toward terrorizing and torturing political opponents of the military.”

Two of the women testified behind screens at a hearing in August. One told of how she was raped in front of her five children after speaking out about the 1992 disappearance of her husband, an Aristide loyalist.

The lawsuit was filed in December 2004 by the Center for Justice and Accountability and the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the three women.

One of them, after she heard about the decision, told CCR, “Although this case is about justice, not money, I am very pleased that the court has held Toto Constant responsible for what happened to us. This is a victory for all the Haitian people.”

CJA’s lead attorney on the case, Moira Feeney, commented, “I hope that this case against Toto Constant will lead to other prosecutions and will assist the Haitian government in bringing other human rights abusers to justice.”