Daily Times

Perhaps, like me, you also squirmed when you read of the 17-year-old Pakistani victim of a gang rape, Amina, who died after immolating herself in protest against a police report that led to the release of a key suspect. News reports said that the woman killed herself just days after a man was cleared of allegedly raping her, prompting Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif to call for “root and branch” changes to the way vulnerable victims are dealt with by his civil administration. Reporters who visited her said she was angry and upset at the way the police handled her case and that she was also not offered help from any other agencies. It is well known that rape victims brought before the police, and during the trial, have said they feel as though they had been “raped all over again” after undergoing a gruelling cross-examination in court. Human rights activists have repeatedly called for a rethink of our adversarial justice system. It is ironic that the system puts so much weight on the victim when the focus should be more on the ways in which we can control this type of offence. It is important that lessons are learnt from Amina’s death.

The court process is a brutal one, and the fact that we have at least two people this month alone who have taken their lives after going through this ordeal is of grave concern. Rape victims say that the court process is as traumatic as their original ordeal. A chain of vulnerability exists from the moment someone reports an incident to police. The First Information Report (FIR) process is controversial, discretional and weak in its delivery with a risk of breaking at any point. We need to ensure that victims and witnesses are surrounded by support from when they report to police, throughout the investigation, the court process and critically after trials are over, whether the accused is found guilty or innocent. There is an issue in how we deal with victims of rape, in terms of them having to go through the court system and inevitably there being so much weight put on the evidence from the victim. If your house is burgled, nobody says it is your fault because the front door is open, but if you are a victim of rape or sexual offences there is a focus on your credibility, your character, your emotions, what you did on the night, what you were wearing and your other relationships. It is often in the nature of sexual violence that offenders will pick on people who are particularly vulnerable and this vulnerability is exploited by the system. Police officers, prosecutors and investigating officers are not trained mental health specialists and are not there around the clock for victims. The officers cannot be there when they are in the courts and giving evidence. There can be a not guilty verdict and the trouble is that officers are not really there at those dark moments.

Rape by its very nature is intentionally designed to produce psychological trauma. It is a form of organised social violence comparable only to war, being the private expression of the same force. Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is the medical term given to the response that survivors have to rape. It is very important to note that RTS is the natural response of a psychologically healthy person to the trauma of rape so these symptoms do not constitute a mental disorder or illness. The most powerful factor in determining psychological suffering of a rape victim is the character of the traumatic event itself. Not only is there the element of surprise, the threat of death and the threat of injury, there is also the violation of the person that is synonymous with rape. This violation is physical, emotional and moral, and associated with the closest human intimacy of sexual contact. The victim is therefore most likely to see a rapist’s actions as motivated by deliberate malice, a malice impossible for them to understand. We get nowhere in our understanding of Rape Trauma Syndrome if we think of rape as simply being unwanted sex. Where combat veterans suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), rape survivors experience similar symptoms on a physical, behavioural and psychological level.

When we examine the relationship of sexual victimisation to women’s suicidal behaviour it appears that the disproportionate sexual victimisation of women may give rise to the greater likelihood of suicide attempts through a variety of pathways, including psychiatric sequelae such as depression and PTSD, and associated psychosocial factors such as life events, problematic and risky lifestyles and behaviours. Society perpetuates stigmas pertaining to suicide and rape, and these stigmas cast a code of silence that solves neither problem. The silence limits the victim and families of the sufferers from coming forward and reporting sexual assault and suicide attempts. Sensitivity and stigma diminish reporting and public awareness of such heinous crimes. However, sexual assault and/or suicide attempts are not merely private matters, but are indeed public issues. I suggest that it is necessary to increase knowledge about these issues, decrease the cost to society in human potential and take long-term action to treat the sexually assaulted and/or suicide attempters. Adequate services and awareness opportunities for both men and women must be available to intervene, treat and support victims.

Women say they often live in fear of men. They are stronger than us, they can hurt us and they can rape us. Some say we live in a ‘rape culture’. Is their fear unfounded? Why or why not? No one objects to acts of domestic violence against women and girls in the media and television because they want to keep their living rooms entertained with social hours and empty pseudo-intellectual discussions. Yet, commercial after commercial, talk-show after talk-show and sitcom after sitcom portray women and girls as objects of cultural ridicule. Violence against women in television and film is a common punchline. What is more, when a woman makes a rape allegation, our culture is ever quick to make excuses and protect men. What about the poor victim whose life he destroyed with his lies? The pervasive fear of men in our culture is not unfounded; in fact, it is an uncensored violent script that is a by-product of calculated political theatre and male chauvinism, and it has become an ideology of hate.

Unfortunately, there are certain sections in our society that profit from perpetuating the fear of all things male, so it persists. In reality, women have far more reasons to fear men in our culture than men have to fear women. Are we not supposed to protect the victims of crime and not the perpetrators of crime? Rape culture is a term that originated in women’s studies and feminist theory. It is more accurate to say that we live in a culture in which sexual violence against women and boys is common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices and media condone, normalise, excuse or tolerate all forms of violence against women and boys. Examples of behaviours commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, rape-apologism and false rape allegation-apologism.

The writer is a member of the Diplomate American Board of Medical Psychotherapists Dip.Soc Studies, member Int’l Association of Forensic Criminologists, associate professor Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at the Huntercombe Group United Kingdom. He can be reached at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com