I stand before you today not as Sunitha Krishnan, but as a victim of sexual violence. I stand before you today to bear witness to the blatant violation of human rights and the prevailing culture of denial of its existence.
As the co-founder of Prajwala, an organization that rescues and rehabilitates victims of sexual violence in India, I have worked on many rape cases. The other day, I came across a story on The Tribune news website. The headline reads: “Delhi’s Shame: Girl battles for life after gang-rape in bus”. Here’s what it tells you: the victim was a 23-year-old paramedical student. She was stripped naked, brutally beaten up, raped and thrown out of a moving vehicle by six men. Here’s what it didn’t tell you: it was not just an ‘unfortunate’
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The article began with a gory description of how the incident unfold, written from the perspective of the perpetrator: “Nothing beat the excitement he felt when he heard her muzzled screams, saw her writhe in extreme pain and watched the blood spurting from her young body.” The first time I read it, I found myself numb on the place, more defeated by the nauseous portrayal of the event than the the fact that it was another attack on women’s dignity. It was like reading lines from a piece of crime fiction. A crime fiction so skillfully written that one could become so absorbed in it and lose touch with reality.
This is the kind of bystanders we have allowed ourselves to become: inconsiderate voyeurs with heads full of straw.
A pattern has been constructed regarding rape reporting in India’s English-language press. Imaginative Observations. Explicit details. Dramatic elements. Racing one another to boost sales, journalists are driven to this unavoidable trend of sensationalism in order to provoke public excitement. As if the event itself was not inherently traumatising enough. As if the act of raping only would not have been as brutal if the rapist didn’t “thrust his tightly clenched fist into the womb of the bruised and battered 23-year-old.” Such focus on the gory details of the event explicitly diverted our attention from the real underlying issue of the male-dominated status quo deeply
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In fact, every 15 minutes, a woman is reportedly raped somewhere in India and that does not include cases that go unreported. 24,923 rape cases were recorded in 2012 but rarely any them made the headlines in national newspapers.
Until the Delhi gang rape.
I want to ask you the questions I have been asking myself over and over again. Why did we need such a horrific incident to finally come to our senses? Why were thousands of other incidents not enough to trigger our outrage? It saddens me to say that our society has come to care more about sexual violence victims only if they are the right victims.
The english-language press in India mainly serves people of the higher class. It is rare for a crime committed in some dark corners of society to have any kind of resonance with the readers. It is human nature to want to distance ourselves from someone who is marked with so much shame and disgrace. We label them as damaged. And so these ‘unqualified’ victims return to the traditionally voiceless segment of society. Their stories, their pain and their struggles slip away like they never existed and the cycle repeats again. This is what I call the ‘People Like Us’
Dhir Rana Due of how important this subject is, rape must be mentioned. It has appeared several times, including in our books, news broadcasts, newspapers, movies, and court cases. There is a case known as the Massie Affair, based on discussions of court proceedings. In a true court case between 1931 and 1932, a lady claimed that she had been raped in Hawaii.
The documentary, Half the Sky, is an eye-opening film on the injustices women experience in the world; during the film, the reporters travel to Sierra Leone. While there, they met with a young girl who had been raped by her uncle, which brought to light the fact that rape is considered to be disgraceful, not for the rapist but for the victim. The young girl in this situation chose to speak out about the sexual abuse she experienced, and she was the one who suffered for it. Personally, I believe it was outrageous for her to have been kicked out of her own home for something that was forced upon her; to quote the documentary, “it is the victim that has the burden to prove herself innocent”, which although such a statement seems primitive, it
However, even though they are usually not the ones at fault, nothing is ever said about the event. In a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, it was found that 75 to 77 percent of sexual assaults, attempted rapes, and completed rapes were never reported (“Sexual Assault and Rapes”). Furthermore, the blame of the whole event was never put on the person responsible. Instead, the victim was blamed for not denying the advances, or for not making themselves clearer in their intents(“Sexual Assault and Rapes”). This huge chip to carry often leaves the victims feeling isolated, scared, full of shame, depressed, and with a low self-esteem(“Sexual Assault and Rapes”).
This plays into the rape myth that women often make false reports accusing innocent men of rape, when in reality very few reports are false. The officers also show more support for the accused rapist than the victim. Officers told Kerry that the defendant had cried and seemed distressed over the current events. They also showed concern for his reputation if she continued accusing him of rape. The officers offer the accused reassurance, while they offered the victims
There was no going back for Nurse and the other women convicted. The hysterical girls and their supposed fits had convinced the public enough to grant Nurse a guilty verdict, so she “was hanged on July 19” (Nardo 66). With the death of one of the most prominent members of society, many began to believe that no one was safe. Because “the people as a whole seemed to crave and thrive on the fear and hysteria…fourteen more guiltless people suffered horrific deaths, and hundreds more were either imprisoned, tortured, or both” (Nardo 67). Nurse, in a twisted way, had escaped before the trials got even more terrifying.
“Society 's posture on rape, and the manifestation of that posture in the courts, help account for the fact that so few rapes are reported” (Anonymous 247). This quote from The Rape of Mr. Smith relates to this scene because Brandon went through a terrible thing, that no person should have to go through, and he was interrogated about it and shown no compassion. “The law discriminates against rape victims in a manner which would not be tolerated by victims of any other crime” (Anonymous 246). This quote also
“My goal is to inspire people to speak out when they see that something is not quite right… that society changes in regards to how we treat someone who speaks out… With my writings, i hope to convey that you can endure tough situations and survive.” On June 10th, 1991, Jaycee was walking to school on what seemed like a regular day, when a car pulled up beside her. The driver rolled down his window, asked for directions, then attacked and abducted her. Jaycee was held in a backyard and/or in a studio, where she lost her innocence, was raped, impregnated, and tortured.
Josie Duffy’s analysis of Serial, a pod-cast about the murder of a Korean girl, is reviewed in her Gawker article “What Serial Gets Wrong”, by examining the many journalistic flaws portrayed in the podcast, from the author, Sarah Koenig. What Koenig forgets to imply is the flawed justice system of 1999’s America, the economic problems the city of Baltimore faced, and her intent of portraying a teen drama rather than an actual crime investigation like it should have been. Duffy addresses that Koenig doesn’t answer the critical question, on what flaws occurred to convict Adnan and instead Koenig comes up with her own assumption on lousy police work or the court room being biased against Muslims all in a span of less than an hour. While she
In the essay “Just Walk on By” written by Brent Staples, the author uses a mixture of exaggeration, quoting, and word choice to grasp the attention of his readers and further his point that racial profiling is an unfortunate circumstance that impacts African American men in negative ways. One can witness very early on in the piece that exaggeration is used, particularly with the way Staples describes his actions. By referring to the first woman to run from him as “My first victim”, two effects are created. The harshness of the word “Victim” draws in attention, and causes one to crave a further investigation into the story. When reading further, the exaggeration is put into place once the reader realises that he committed no crime, and was simply walking down the street.
There needs to be more of an understanding from the communities, friends, and family, of the effects of sexual violence. The victims need understanding and not ridicule. Rejection can lead to many other problems. Some of the community believes the women now have a sickness which is a fear that lingers inside the victim. Many husbands do not want to be intimate or even touch their wives after a rape occurs.
Sexual assault laws have been amended and created over time to ensure the criminal justice system remains sensitive to the tribulations involved in rape trials for the victim. However, the connotative capacity of language used in evidentiary testimonies in rape trials can defeat the purpose of these reforms as ‘language is not merely a means of putting forth evidence in a case, but it in fact transforms the nature of evidence itself, thus influencing the outcome of the case’ (Maheshwari 2014:1). As theorised by Bourdieu (1982) symbolic power as ‘the power to create reality through language’ (Matoesian 1995:38) is successfully employed in rape trials to instil patriarchal and legal domination over the victim. The use of language in courtroom
Given that these words typically indicate negative denotations, it concludes that here it is contrary to what his audience perceives; for example, “victim” implies he is the perpetrator. This misrepresentation echoes throughout the essay as it exhibits irony; Brent Staples is the victim. Furthermore, the author lays out the bare facts that black men are dangerous. After
Despite the allegations made against Trump, over fifty-nine thousand people voted for Trump, showing the lack of importance sexual assault has in our society. The dismissive nature of our country to sexual assault dehumanizes women the same way we see in
But wait, you may say, how will people know if someone’s been raped if I don’t shove it in their faces? Audiences should be given more credit, and writers should have faith, that their viewers will be able to understand what has happened based on contextual clues, perhaps even in the form of a character saying they were raped if you’re really worried people will miss it. For example, Mad Max: Fury Road includes a group of women escaping
Does anyone know what is sexual violence? According to wikipedia sexual violence is any sexual act to obtain a sexual act by violence, acts to traffic a person or acts directed against a person 's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations. * -------> *read directly from card* From what I researched, sexual violence is a serious health problem and an aggressive act that aims to express power and dominance over the victim through sexual harassment.