Changing mindset to reintegrate abused women

Angela Robinson, Gulshan, Dhaka
You reported the shocking case (why did it take two years to come to court?) of a woman student raped by her college teacher who recorded the scene on his mobile phone to blackmail her into consenting to a repeat offence. She then refused to see him again, married - presumably for protection - but the obscene footage circulated, via a mobile service centre who were given the phone to mend, and reached her new husband. He sent her back to her parents. The rapist has now been given a life sentence but you did not say whether the girl's husband took her back or whether he rejected her as 'damaged goods'. The social status of a girl/woman who, through no fault of her own, has been sexually molested is a sign of a society's health, or sickness. If, in practice, she can never be respected again, then this is the prime reason for many female suicides - even those who simply fear they MAY be molested. Somebody, somewhere, is indoctrinating girls/women into believing that being sexually molested is indeed, 'a fate worse than death' so they might as well be dead. A lot of rapists obviously feel this too as they murder their victims… Some friends of mine are working to help to reintegrate abused women back into Bangladeshi society, when they were trafficked into the sex trade, got HIV and been sent home. This noble work can show neighbours that, by their right attitudes, they can offer these women a life worth living… From every newspaper, in every school and home, from the pulpits of mosques, temples and churches, the message has to be continually repeated - that a raped girl is innocent, a rapist is guilty and society has the duty to accept rape victims back into respectable society and not condemn them - and ensure the law is quickly enforced against the offenders and their supporters who alone must suffer shame. I know from experience that wrong mindsets can be changed if the best people in society, from government to street corner, are united in the determination to set people free from such mental slavery. I hope that husband has taken his wife back, freely and without condemnation though it will not be easy if she did not inform him of her past so he may feel 'used'…