It's a story so common, it never even made it
into the newspapers. A
20-year-old private tutor who was allegedly gang-raped by her fiance and his
associates and set on fire in Etawah last week died in hospital around 12.15am
on thursday, July 2013. The young woman was battling for life with 90% burn injuries at
the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences at Saifai in
Etawah.
The 2012 Delhi gang rape case involves a rape and murder that occurred on 16
December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood located in the southern part of
New Delhi, when a 23-year-old female physiotherapy intern was
beaten and gang raped in a
bus in which she was travelling with her male companion. There were only six
others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman. The woman
died from her injuries thirteen days later while undergoing emergency treatment
in Singapore
The
incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was
condemned by various women's groups, both in India and abroad. Subsequently,
public protests against the Govt. of India and the Govt. of Delhi for not providing adequate security
for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with
security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the
country.
Most
women live in fear of incidents like this. We feel at risk because we are. We
know the statistics. By some estimates one out of four women will be the victim
of sexual assault in her lifetime. Each year women report almost half a million
rapes and sexual assaults, according to the most recent reports.
We
live in a culture where we are taught that we have choices about our lives and
that we're responsible for what happens to us. As feminist author Gloria
Steinem says, "If you are beaten, you're said to have incited it, if
you're raped you're said to have invited it. We all know that these things run
very deep in the culture."
"From the time a child is very, very small, we're
teaching that they're responsible for the things that happen in their life both
positive and negative," says C.Y. Roby. "So when a rape situation
occurs, usually what I see going through a victim's mind is what did I do that
was wrong."
It's not only the victim who blames herself. Society is
quick to blame her as well. "Even the innocence of children is
questioned," says Maestas. "Often times I have sat with a police
officer or a client and have heard that a four-year-old girl was responsible
for seducing her perpetrator who was an adult. Now what are we saying? What
we're saying is that we don't know how to take responsibility as a society.
Therefore, we will continue to blame the victim."
Rape is a devastating crime. Some women are badly
injured. Some become pregnant. Some contract HIV. But the emotional trauma can
be worse than any physical injury. Women who are raped have nightmares, panic
attacks, waves of self-doubt, an overwhelming sense of distrust. The lives of
women who are raped are forever changed. Some say they will never be the same,
that it’s like dying. "I know that I will never really recover from
this," says Maggie. "The impact will always be with me and I will
never trust the same way and I know I can't even be tested for HIV for six
months. So I have to even keep that in mind. I'll never be able to get away
from this."
Who is most likely to be assaulted or raped? Maestas
stresses that rapists choose those who are vulnerable, which is why children
and even the elderly are at risk. Her staff has worked with victims of all
backgrounds and ages, including a 94-year-old woman who was raped and a
three-and-a-half-week-old baby who was sexually abused. Half the victims the
staff served in emergency rooms were under 14 years of age.
Locking doors and windows is an easy enough thing. A
woman alone instinctively bolts the doors and windows even on a sweltering
summer night. For most women, such precautions become second nature. Ask a
woman what she does to protect herself and she'll tick off a list of specifics:
never leaving a building without her keys in hand, looking over her shoulder in
the parking lot, scanning faces on an elevator, avoiding parking terraces. Yet,
despite all the precautions, women can still be at risk.
They
say, women have power over me because they're beautiful and sexual and I want
them and they elicit that and I feel powerless," he says. "Just
listen for a minute to the way in which we describe women's beauty and
sexuality. We describe it as a violence against us. She is a knock-out, a
bomb-shell, dressed to kill, a femme fatale, stunning, ravishing. I mean all of
these are words of violence against us. It's like, wow, she knocked me out.
The media, biology and culture may be contributing
factors, but the majority of men -- those who are the product of the same
biology, the same culture -- don't rape women…!!!
