It’s one thing to sympathize with the victims of African genocide from the safety of a dark movie theater hall.

It’s another to visit their country, play with their children and speak with them in person, just as Lee Ann De Reus did in May 2009.

De Reus, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State U.  Altoona, spoke Monday night about her experience visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo and interviewing 30 Congolese women directly affected by an age-old conflict.

Once an issue between the Hutu and Tutsi militias of Rwanda, the genocide has spread to Congo, where it may be more appropriately labeled “gendercide,” said Sarah O’Donald, co-president of PSU Knitivism.

Knitivism was a co-sponsor of the event with the Africana Research Center at Penn State.

The militias now employ a new weapon of war — rape — against Congolese women affiliated with neither of the two opposing parties, O’Donald (senior-human development and family studies) said.

“By raping Congolese women, the militias change them so that they’re no longer accepted or wanted in their communities,” she said.

Yet, with every photograph and every slide, De Reus captured the strength and courage of the abandoned women, interweaving their stories with anecdotes of her visit to the hospital that accepted them.

The Panzi Hospital of Bukavu, located near the Congo-Rwanda border, treats more than 3,000 patients a year, over 60 percent of who are victims of sexual violence, De Reus said.

The hospital provides the women with medical attention and a safe haven and plans to offer such services as childcare and job training in the future.

Together with Dr. Denis Mukwege, a doctor at the Panzi Hospital, De Reus co-founded the Panzi Foundation last February to generate support for the hospital and its efforts.

“These women have a voice, but no one’s listening,” De Reus told the audience. “As a privileged woman from the west, I feel an obligation and a responsibility as a human being to help.”

She encouraged students to speak out against the gendercide in the Congo — even if they didn’t have the money to donate to the Panzi Foundation — by contacting elected officials, writing letters to the editor, researching the conflict online and renting “The Greatest Silence,” a documentary about the victims of sexual violence.