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Women Sexual abuse: Too much noise, little action
2006-03-08 07:42:04
By Simbiso Machine
As we celebrate International Women’s Day we should remember some of the vices that women are exposed to and continue to fight for women’s freedom from abuse.
Almost every day newspapers report ghastly stories of women being hurt, maimed and raped by adult men.
All sorts of people from journalists, social workers, politicians, religious leaders and the ordinary people in the streets are talking about it.
The situation is getting out of hand and something needs to be done about it.
Unfortunately, the issue has raised so much noise but little action that can lead to a practical solution to the problem.
Too many people believe that crazy people who indulge in illicit drugs are the ones concerned responsible for sexually abusing women.
Because of this, many people clamour for harsher punishments to be imposed on the perpetrators as if killing or castrating them will somehow solve the problem.
Surprisingly, in the clamour to punish the monster, the abused woman is quickly forgotten and little is done to ensure her healing and protection.
We owe it to our women to do a thoughtful analysis of the problem and help create a world in which women can really live in safety and love.
Punishing the abusers will not solve the problem.
Instead they must be held accountable and made to understand the seriousness of their actions.
In order to make amends to their victims, they should be made to pay for the woman’s health care and perform mandatory community service to make women safer.
Women must be taught to say no to men and refuse to accept abuse.
Women need to be informed on how they can resist harassment for example, promises of jobs or high marks in return for sexual favours.
Many studies, including analysis of newspaper reports by the Tanzanian Legal and Human Rights Centre ( November 1997), have shown that the vast majority of perpetrators are adult men who are close to the women they abuse.
The Neema Isaac saga in the Daily News editions of the 23rd and 24th of November is a clear testimony of the above.
Neema was abused by a man who was her employer, she trusted that man.
If anything, the man was supposed to play a fatherly role towards the girl but he decided to take advantage of her and abuse her sexually.
She was vulnerable because of her age and many other things. Maybe she feared losing her job if she said no to his advances but she lost the job anyway that is why we say young girls need to be educated to say no to abuse.
Looking at the saga closely, I noticed that attention was focussing on catching the perpetrator and bring him to book.
Whilst that seems to be the right thing to do, there was also a need to look at Neema’s life and rehabilitate her.
At that time, no one seemed interested in the plight of the girl.
Fine, the monster might have been caught and justice done but after that what happened to Neema?
How is she going to move on with her life because she has been reduced to motherhood at a very early age.
Do you think punishing the perpetrator helped her or took away the psychological trauma that she went through?
I don’t think so.
I strongly feel that whilst the culprit deserves to be punished, the victim needs rehabilitation of some sort.
You don’t just punish the man and think that the girl will be satisfied and everything will get back to normal.
Society seems to be blaming Neema for engaging in a relationship with an older man but no one is prepared to look at the circumstances behind all this.
Neema is not the only one suffering because of abuse by a man whom she trusted.
I vividly remember the situation of another girl who was abused by her maternal grandfather at the age of thirteen.
That girl was raised in my family by my parents because no one else wanted to raise her. Her name is Angel.
Her, mother, who was a commercial sex worker died of HIV and left her in the care of her parents.
Her grandmother was suffering from mental illness hence she was lost in her own world.
The grandfather took advantage of this and abused his own grand daughter.
Can you believe it?One day, I plucked up courage and asked her how it happened.
She said, ’ grandpa would sneak into my room at night and sexually abuse me. He would come with a knife and tell me that if I scream or tell anyone about this, he would kill me with that knife so I never told anyone and it continued like this.’
How safe can women be if your own grandfather who is supposed to be your custodian abuses you? We are very scared of strangers and we are always alert when we get in contact with strangers yet they are harmless.
The very people we are comfortable and feel safe with are the very people who will abuse us.
We all expect to receive maximum protection from our grandparents that is why we relax when we are with them.
And the other thing is that people might not even believe you if you tell them that you have been abused by a close relative that is why sometimes victims keep quiet.
Angel was rescued by a neighbour who saw her going to the river to take a bath and noticed that she had difficulty in walking then followed her and asked her till she got the whole story and went straight to the police.
Angel was taken to hospital for treatment of the STI which her grandfather had passed on to her.
She stayed in hospital till people from the social welfare approached my parents and asked them to take care of her because sending her back to her grandmother was just as good as passing a death sentence on her.
She went through a lot of counselling and rehabilitation and now she is working as a teacher.
She has no place to call home except my parents’ place so when she feels like going home she goes there.
Society needs to do something to protect women from abuse. The sad thing is that in most cases these girls are blamed for the abuse.
Angel faced a lot of problems because some people did not even believe her story.
Others went to the extent of accusing her of having hallucinations.
Even that woman who is alleged to have been raped by Jacob Zuma of south Africa was booed at and had to go to court in hiding because people were blaming her yet she is supposed to be the victim.
They all seemed to sympathize with the former Vice President, Jacob Zuma.
With such mentality, women are still not very safe from abuse and harassment in this world. Something needs to be done.
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