(CNN) -- The young girl whispered in a hushed tone. She looked down as she spoke, only glancing up from her dark round eyes every now and then. She wanted to tell more, but she was too ashamed. She was just 9 years old when, she says, Congolese soldiers gang-raped her on her way to school.



The young girl on the right says she was raped by Congolese soldiers. She was just 9 when it happened.



"These two soldiers nabbed her, put a bag over her head and pulled her into the bushes. She explains it as, 'They got me,' " says Sherrlyn Borkgren, who spent a month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year.



Borkgren, a wedding photographer and freelance journalist, traveled to the war-torn region of eastern Congo after being awarded the ShootQ Grant, a $10,000 award to free photographers from everyday life to pursue a project that raises awareness of an important global issue.



Borkgren pauses when she speaks of meeting the girl. "She was obviously very traumatized to repeat this out loud, and I don't think she had repeated it to anyone." The young girl lied to her about her age when they first spoke.



"She said she was 15 when she was raped," Borkgren says. "I figured she probably wanted to say she was 15 because it's more acceptable than to say, 'I was 9 when they raped me.' "



The United Nations estimates 200,000 women and girls have been raped in Congo over the last 12 years, when war broke out with Rwanda and Uganda backing Congolese rebels seeking to oust then-Congo President Laurent Kabila. Rape became a weapon of war, aid groups say.



"It is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman or girl," says Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who has spent the last 10 years focusing on Congo. "These are often soldiers and combatants deliberately targeting women and raping them as a strategy of war, either to punish a community, to terrorize a community or to humiliate them."



Most times, the women are raped by at least two perpetrators. "Sometimes, that is done in front of the family, in front of the children," Van Woudenberg says. She sighs, "What causes men to rape -- I wish I had an answer to that."



Against this backdrop, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the world's strongest voices for women's rights, traveled to Congo as part of her whirlwind trip to Africa.  Watch Clinton detail expectations for Africa »



Clinton arrived in Goma in eastern Congo Tuesday where she is to meet with rape victims during her visit. "I hope that here in the [Congo] there will be a concerted effort to demand justice for women who are violently attacked, and to make sure that their attackers are punished," Clinton said Monday after a tour of a Kinshasa hospital.



Human rights groups are eager to see if Clinton pressures Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the son of Laurent Kabila, to do more to pursue charges against top army commanders accused of rape.



"Soldiers have committed gang rapes, rapes leading to injury and death, and abductions of girls and women," a report released last month by Human Rights Watch says. "Their crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law. Commanders have frequently failed to stop sexual violence and may themselves be guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity as a consequence."



Van Woudenberg says punishment, unfortunately, is all too rare for sex crimes. "If you rape, you get away with it," she says.



According to the United Nations, there were 15,996 new cases of sexual violence registered throughout Congo in 2008. Nearly two out of every three rapes were carried out against children, most of them adolescent girls, the Human Rights Watch report says.



A paltry 27 soldiers were convicted in military courts last year. Under the current court system,
who met a girl? how many soldiers nabbed? What is the Congo the worst place for? How many were raped in Democratic Republic of Congo?
Sherrlyn Borkgren, two to be a woman or girl," 200,000
question: who met a girl?, answer: Sherrlyn Borkgren, | question: how many soldiers nabbed?, answer: two | question: What is the Congo the worst place for?, answer: to be a woman or girl," | question: How many were raped in Democratic Republic of Congo?, answer: 200,000