For Sister Mary Sweeney from Co Kildare, who survived the war but had to flee the convent with the children, this was too much to bear. "I was devastated; I couldn't believe this man we all trusted for 23 years. . . my God, this happened in our own school, " said Sister Mary. "They're so vulnerable; they're so hurt that anyone who shows them affection, they're gone. It is very frightening for a hearing impaired who doesn't hear what is going on and also doesn't see. . .

We have very little here: no electricity, no lights. It makes the children doubly vulnerable."

The decade-long war in Sierra Leone which left 50,000 dead was one of Africa's most brutal. Atrocities against women and children, rape and torture, were commonplace; amputation, hacking off the hands of their victims . . . even babies and small children . . . was the rebel's chosen method of attack. The war turned children into drugged killing machines, giving them power beyond their age.

"Children don't examine command.

These children were given high positions; they were called colonel and general, and made feel like they had power, and so a lot of children were used during the war for these various tricks used by the fighting forces, " said Michael Charley, Sierra Leonean child protection officer for Unicef in Kono province.

In all, 10,000 children were forcibly conscripted as porters, fighters or bush wives. Soon after the war ended in 2002, the full scale of the terrible legacy was revealed at Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), modeled loosely on South Africa's commission on apartheid crimes.

Although the bulk of crimes against children and women lay at the hands of the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front, militia fighters did their fair share too.

It's estimated that as many as 64,000 young women were sexually abused during the war. In Makeni, the rebels left more than their headquarters behind at the end of the war. At a Caritas centre supported by Unicef, three large reedwalled buildings are packed with 80 young women, mostly former 'bush wives'. In one corner of the former rebel's quarters, a room is filled with little ones learning their ABC.

Their mothers had lost their childhood and their education but now they are about to 'graduate' with useful new skills . . . cooking and catering, sewing and dyeing and weaving. This will give them the tools to make a living for themselves and their offspring, some of whom are living reminders of what happened during the war.

Everywhere the ghosts of war haunt the living. Adama Kamara was a young mother when a rebel turned her into his 'bush wife'.

"The rebel that killed my husband forced me to stay with him, " said Adama.

The rebel too was killed and Adama was left with identical twins. Now eight years old, their mother has not tried to wipe anything away, but she has come to terms with the past.

"I used to tell them that it was during the war that I was suckling their elder brother. So their rebel father raped me and I became pregnant. So, I told them the truth, " she said. "The issue of forgiveness is being preached in all corners of our society. So all that I will say is that he was the father of my children and I will just continue to tell the children what I suffered because of our relationship and because of the war. We will forgive them, but never forget them, " said Adama.

Forgiveness in exchange for the truth was central to Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Justice is still ongoing and the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, languishes now in a UN special court in Freetown awaiting trial for war crimes at the Hague. The TRC does seem to have healed some of the wounds, but the real scars left on children cannot be seen.

"The rebels came to every village, because they wanted to multiply their war instruments. They abducted those children, they trained them to become rebels, and gave them drugs. And it is that traumatic experience, that damaging of the mental capacity of the childf using the child to commit atrocities, those were evil things, " said Bishop Joseph Humper, head of Sierra Leone's TRC.

"Now those children are coming back to society and coming to grips with their childhood state and their adulthood state. They lost education; they lost a crucial stage of general psychological development that they were supposed to go through to become responsible persons. That is one of the greatest disservices we did to them. There is a lost generation and we need to bridge the gap."

Standing up in front of his classmates in Makeni convent, a 17-year-old boy draws a picture of an AK-47 and stands up in front of his fellow classmates in Makeni convent. He cannot speak or hear but his disturbed gestures and grunts speak volumes about what happened to him during the war. He points to his head, indicating he was drugged, gesticulating as if he were shooting. All the children here experienced lost years of unspeakable fear. Some were killers too.

"They've all been damaged. TRC was here. Our children were very moved, " said Sister Sweeney. "A little boy of 12 years old came up and said, 'It was not my fault. I didn't mean it. I was small.'

They were all brought to tears by him.

I think that the whole moral sense has gone, because anything went with the rebels and these kids have all been seeing this at every level. Families have been disrupted."

Scenes of the worst violence during the war have been renamed, and peace signs boldly declare a new era . . . "War don-don. We love peace." But violence against children lurks in the shadows. Small cinemas showing extremely violent movies with rape scenes proliferate the busy alleys of the capital Freetown and other cities.

Entrance is just a few cents, so the shacks are full of small children. It was in a small cinema like this that Buka's horror story took place. Four boys attacked her.

"I went to the cinema to watch a movie and feel asleep. I was not aware when the movie ended. Those boys tore my skirt and pants. I was shouting but they held my mouth not to shout."

Buka won't tell her new friends at this Goal/Unicef-supported centre what happened to her, even though many of these girls have similar stories.

For the first time in Sierra Leone's history, help is now at hand for these children. Hidden discreetly in hospitals, new centres like the Rainbo Centres in Freetown and Kono have been set up to deal with the growing numbers of young victims of sexual abuse, but funding for the facilities is fragile.

Cases of babies being raped are the most traumatic to handle. The rooms are child-friendly; teddy bears and fluffy toys sit in bright, homely rooms. Even older children cannot find words to express what happened to them; their physical wounds are healed more easily.

Most rapes go unreported but for those brave enough to seek the law, there are newly trained plain-clothed police men and women who will take up their cases at family support units attached to police stations.

So although few make it as far as the courts, Sierra Leone is starting to take the abuse of its children seriously. But real justice is still a long way off.