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Little attention has been devoted to the question of how children experienced 1994 within the world of social science. Yet children constituted important actors at the time, both as victims and as perpetrators. They accounted for a majority of the victims, as well as a substantial portion of the surviving population. This unique circumstance gave rise to a new family model, where a group of orphans was led by an older child. The participation of children in the massacres also proved to be one of the defining transgressions of the genocide. Examining these experiences ultimately allows us to investigate the ways in which the massacres redefined the social boundaries of childhood in Rwanda.