WHEN DID THEY ASK FOR IT?

Sir,
 
In the country, a man who had been arrested for rape and released on bail, went back to rape the same victim he had been accused of raping, the victim later committed suicide.

In another case, a man who was arrested for rape and later admitted to bail is alleged to have gone out and raped five minors who were all related to him. After any rape ordeal, a victim just wants to go home and forget the rape ever happened, but where does a victim run to when home is where the assault happened?

To this day, it is amazing that there are still people who believe that women forfeit their right to sexual agency and sovereignty when they’re intoxicated or go out with men they don’t know or flirting or talking with them or kissing them or behaving as if they live in some kind of fantasy land where women might actually have an equal right to decide when and where sex is consensual and not just have it forced upon them.

Sometimes they are the witnesses who make judgments about how women were behaving in bars. Still others are the friends and family members who eagerly wait for the day their sons are released from the ‘nightmare’ of a vengeful woman who got what she was asking for and then cried foul afterwards. But what bar were these minors ‘flirting’ in? How much alcohol had they taken, and how and when did they ‘ask for it’?

These people who keep making excuses about rape walk among us, and they protect rapists. They are the first people to enforce rape culture and the first to deny it exists.
They don’t want to accept that this is what a rapist looks like - not like a monster, but like their son, their brother, their friend, their colleague, their customer, their mate, their boyfriend or their husband.

We need to start accepting that rapists do not carry signs, they carry conditioning. They carry the conditioning that tells them that sexually violating another person is okay if they decide she was asking for it.

They carry the conditioning that reassures them their families and communities will not just stand by them but will defend them against these claims and assist them to believe that their victims are the ones at fault, not them – and bail them out. They carry the conditioning that shows them wider society will not only welcome them back with open arms but won’t even blame them in the first place. Instead, they will blame the mothers who should have known better than to leave their five children unattended.

A newspaper report said a judge, in jest, said if it were not a Friday he was going to dismiss the bail application filed by the accused after he failed to disclose some of the facts after the accused filed yet another bail application. What perpetrator would take rape crime seriously if it is used as a joke even in court? It is no wonder rape cases sky rocket at this rate, and even more – the accused are adopting a culture of going back to commit the very same crime.

N M

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