From 1915 to 1934, the United States occupied Haiti, and rape and murder of Haitian civilians by US soldiers was commonplace. Both officers and enlisted men participated in the sexual violence, raping adult women and young girls, and sometimes holding women as sex slaves. The marines, who administered a group of Haitian gendarmes acting as police, were accused of widespread rapes of women and girls and of trying to use the gendarmes to find them women to use as concubines. Evidence exists that some military higher-ups knew of the sexual violence but did little to punish it, condoning it by denying it, questioning the virtue of Haitian women, and suggesting that raped women had actually consented. A victim blaming mentality existed among the occupiers, who thought of Haitian women as being "of easy virtue"—a mentality which served to justify and even deny the existence of sexual violence.