Stand up to your tormentors
Photo: STAR
The protests concerning rape - all rape - that demand action by 'the authorities' are surely avoiding a key aspect of the issue. Why should any girl who has been raped, not commit suicide or want to live when they have been indoctrinated to believe that their future life is doomed - they will be unmarriageable, a liability to their family, an object of shame in their community - in other words, they might as well be dead? But who told them this - WHO? If that is all the 'sex education' some communities give their children, the argument for a correct and compassionate version to be part of a compulsory syllabus, in schools, mobile classrooms and street theater, is overwhelming. Let me invite some of your readers, sir, to ask their friends, family and employees the following questions: Would you yourself, or your son, marry a woman who had been raped? If you heard people speaking badly of a local girl who had been sexually abused, would you remain silent or openly rebuke them and actively help her to play a full part in public life? Do you allow boys and men to boast of their sexual conquests, especially of maidservants, street-girls, handicapped women and other vulnerable females? If rape has been committed, what are the chances of you forming a group to press for justice? Are you prepared to help women to get out of abusive sexual relationships, inside or outside marriage, and pay, maybe via taxation, for 'safe houses' for such women and their rehabilitation to normal society? Would you press your religious leaders to take a clear stand on this issue and preach against it? The African expression - 'It takes a whole village to raise a child†illustrates this issue also. If rape is no longer to be tolerated, a huge social commitment is necessary with, I hope, religious leaders in the forefront, to overturn entrenched cultural prejudices that are the main factor in producing the present misery and injustice. Some 'developed' countries are not perfect but we are a long way down the road from this dear country.
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