We need to talk about it
View(s):The rape and murder of a pre-adolescent girl by two of her older male relations featured in the headline news a while back. Some of the public responses to this event were alarming. A large part of them were comments along the lines of ‘Where were the parents? They should have been taking care of her properly!’
These comments are disturbing for several reasons. To lay the blame of this child’s death on the people who have the most to lose from it is both heartless and short-sighted. Although supervision of children is crucial, any real parent knows it is impossible to stalk your child from dawn till dusk to keep them from harm’s way. What’s more is that the perpetrators were relations – the kind of known and trusted figures that would never arouse suspicion.
Although we profess disgust at the rapists, our minds automatically find fault with the victim because for some reason, when it comes to sexual acts, it is not purely the fault of the aggressor.
If you were robbed, who would you blame? Would you blame the robber for breaking through your window or yourself for having made your house look nice? Would you blame yourself for leaving the house unoccupied for a few hours while you attended to the million other duties?
Why blame the victim’s parents? Why not blame the perpetrators’ parents? This may seem a bizarre way of approaching the situation but the fact of the matter is that the problem of rape is always dealt with in a superficial way. While teaching our children how to dress and behave we should be teaching them how NOT to rape, just as we teach them not to steal or to kill. And it is not just about women either. How often do you hear of the rape and murder of homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals?
Is it because our conservative society does not allow for us to talk about it that we never even call it to question and hence rampant and yet preventable problems like rape, hate-crimes, HIV all get pushed under the carpet of ‘polite, allowable conversation topics’.
This article was written by a Stitch volunteer. To find out more visit www.stitchmovement.com
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