Jeanne Alida "Jan" Ruff-O'Herne AO (18 January 1923 – 19 August 2019)[1][2] was a Dutch Australian of Irish ancestry and human rights activist known for campaigning internationally against war rape.

After remaining silent for fifty years, Ruff-O'Herne spoke out publicly from the 1990s until her death to demand a formal apology from the Japanese government and to highlight the plight of other "comfort women".

[5] In February 1944, high-ranking Japanese officials arrived at the camp and ordered all single girls seventeen years and older to line up.

[4][5] Ruff-O'Herne got the signature of each girl that night on a small white handkerchief and embroidered it in different colours which she kept for fifty years and referred to it in her writing as precious "secret evidence of the crimes done to us".

[5] Shortly before the end of World War II, the women were moved to a camp in Bogor, West Java, where they were reunited with their families.

"[7] In 2002 she was made an Officer in the Order of Australia for being an "advocate for human rights and the protection of women in war, and for leadership in encouraging articulation of war-related atrocities.

[10] In the decades after the war, Ruff-O'Herne did not speak publicly about her experience until 1992, when three Korean comfort women demanded an apology and compensation from the Japanese government.

[5] In 1994 Ruff-O'Herne published a personal memoir titled Fifty Years of Silence, which documents the struggles that she faced while secretly living the life of a war rape survivor.

I hope that by speaking out, I have been able to make a contribution to world peace and reconciliation, and that human rights violation against women will never happen again.