WOMEN “to blame” for being raped…!!!????

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…!!!