(CNN) -- The young Afghan girl sits in the center of the room, weeping. Using her hand and her blue scarf to hide her face, she recounts how she was brutally raped by five gunmen.

The girl's tragic case is one of many in war-torn Afghanistan, activists say.

The 12-year-old girl's family members say they'll take their own lives unless justice is served.

"We will all commit suicide; this is not living," cries the mother of the girl, whose gang-rape occurred in Northern Afghanistan.

The girl's adolescent voice pleads for help from Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

The girl's elderly and immobilized father trembles and can only raise a quivering hand as he sobs. He is rendered helpless in a country where a man's dignity and honor is protecting his family.

Her little brother sits in the back, far too young to understand the situation but still traumatized by the devastated cries around him. He wipes away his tears.

The children's mother sobs. "We've been violated. We can't live our lives. We can't sit. We can't sleep at night," she says.

Video of the crushed family aired on the privately owned Ariana TV two weeks ago before it was posted on the Internet by an activist group, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

In a country riddled with corruption, despair and lawlessness, the family has risked their lives by coming forward.

They have since met with Karzai, according to an aide who said the president wept with the family and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Karzai has fired the police chief from the city where the attack occurred, the aide said.

The family lives in a government-provided safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan.

"This is just an example among thousands of other cases," says Shaima, a member of RAWA. "The rest go unnoticed by the media."

Shaima is not her real name; she uses it to protect her identity. RAWA members themselves have often been targeted for raising taboo issues in a culture in which women and children are often treated as second-class citizens.

"Women and girls, especially young girls, are the most unprotected people of Afghanistan. They are raped, kidnapped and murdered," Shaima says.

Just last week, a 3-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by unidentified men, a government official confirms. The toddler was later released and, the official says, is recovering.

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