Daily Times

In October of 2012, the verdict of a gang rape case in the suburbs of Paris shocked France, causing many in the country (including women’s organisations and politicians) and around the world to question whether France was actually encouraging rape. It caused an outrage. The lenient sentences and acquittals of 14 men accused of gang rape by two then teenage girls were viewed as shocking. It was also considered a slap in the face of the two young women — the victims — to say the least.

The alleged incidents occurred between 1999 and 2001. Two young women — aged 15 and 16 at the time — growing up in a rundown housing complex outside f Paris were repeatedly gang raped for two years by an increasing number of young men. One witness even claims that there were 50 perpetrators. The victims were threatened and told that their apartment would be burnt down if they ever spoke to anyone about what was happening to them. The 14 men on trial, many of whom are married with families and jobs including, one ambulance driver, denied rape. Some of them attested that the relations were consensual, going against reports by psychiatric experts who had concurred that the women had been sexually attacked.

Following the verdict, 30 women’s organisations started a petition online demanding government response, including stronger laws to protect women. The petition has gathered 2,400 signatures and it casts light on the dismal fact that very few women in France report their rapes, and even fewer get convictions. Furthermore, when a woman does come forward, she is immediately shamed and discredited. The petition, along with fighting violence against women, also demands better laws to defend women following a series of cases of sexual harassment in France. Only recently has a law been passed to make sexual harassment a crime punishable by law through imprisonment.

This incident occurred in one of the wealthiest and most developed countries where there are established, clear-cut fundamental rights for all forms of violence and injustices committed. Yet only just recently, in the 21st century, has the system agreed to shed light on the daily occurrences of sexual violence against women in society and deemed it for the crime that it is.

Sound familiar? As India now struggles with and finally accepts that sexual aggression against women is a veritable problem in society and figuring out how exactly to deal with a matter that for generations has been ignored, it must be remembered that such matters are very sadly a reality even in the ‘developed’ countries. The common factor that links societies beyond socio-economic, geographical and cultural barriers is, very sadly, the issue of women and violent crimes against them.

What is it about society that turns a blind eye to what a woman herself considers a violation of her personal being to the point that time and time again, across borders we hear that very few women report these violations against them to the authorities? France is one of the most liberal countries in the world. There are no issues of dowries, female infanticides, taboos against pre-marital sexual relations, inequalities between the sexes in the education system, norms where women must accept without question succumbing to the desires of their husbands and in-laws. And yet, what the example of the gang-rape case has shed light upon is that there are dark areas of being a woman even in an open-minded country like France. This fact carries the horrible stigma of bringing into public knowledge when she has been violated in terms that are clearly criminal in all perspectives for fear of being shamed, ridiculed and justice simply not being served.

During the presidential elections of 2012 in the United States, two Republican candidates to the US Senate who thankfully lost their election bids caused a furor when they passed utterly offensive remarks on the issue of rape. The Senate candidate, Todd Akins made atrocious comments about what he incomprehensibly referred to as “legitimate rape”, or as he explained, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down.” This obviously outrageous comment was a novelty to every medical professional who heard it!

Another Senate candidate, Joe Murdoch, went even further in this twisted line of thinking and defended his staunch anti-abortion stance by calling pregnancy resulting from rape “a gift from God.” Similarly, some male Indian politicians have passed shockingly misogynous comments after the Delhi incident on what incites men to rape, as if to validate it.

Apart from leaving any sane man speechless, the mindset that is seen over and over again on the issues of rape and violations against women are, to say the least, too often horrific. Much is being said now about how to tackle this grave problem of looking at the issue for the crime that it is. As President Obama very aptly stated as a response to all this madness during the elections, “Rape is rape.” There are no ifs, ands or buts about any thin lines as to what could be considered legitimate in this criminal offence.

Where lie the roots of these evil misconceptions? Education? Movies? Family structures? Lenient anti-rape laws? An inane desire to blame the woman who has been violated rather than to punish the perpetrator? It is all those things and much more. Unfortunately, as societies, we do not seem to be at a nearly acceptable level of treating rape as a clearly defined crime as we do murder. Until we do so, more and more women will be the victims of this atrocity known as rape. The shame lies not with the woman violated but with society’s incompetence and blindness to address it and properly punish those who commit it.

The writer is an English and French professor and columnist residing in the USA and France. She can be reached at scballand@gmail.com