IT is a fact that most victims of rape and other sexual offences do not report their ordeal, because the reality is that they almost never receive justice in the legal system as the perpetrators are most often set free, with no repercussions for their evil actions.A shocking judgment whereby a rapist was recently set free underscores the continuum of injustices meted out to victims of sexual offences.
The victim in question was kidnapped, raped repeatedly, with all her clothes confiscated by the predator. She escaped, totally naked, through a window. A passerby rescued her as she hung precariously from the window ledge.
The perpetrator’s defence that the sex was consensual was seemingly accepted by the players in the justice system who dispensed what, in this skewed system, they project as justice in this case.
Could one envisage the years-long trauma – at varying levels, this victim suffered, only to see her tormentor go free? Actually he was freed on bail almost immediately after being charged with committing the heinous act.
This story is re-enacted in various formulations in all of Guyana’s courthouses, with enduring pain and lifelong repercussions for the victims, while the perpetrators are celebrated for their ‘machismo’.
Even as this editorial was being written another rape victim may be facing the same fate.
This newspaper earlier this week reported on the brutal rape of a teenager in a cemetery by a beast, who showed no mercy or remorse for his bestial treatment of a young girl who had been going home from her engagement in a productive life for the enhancement of her future prospects as a citizen of this country and a member of the human family.
He abused her, with a knife to her throat, then abandoned her at the scene of his crime, uncaring of her fate.
He was caught, but would she find justice; or would her fate be that of the victim of the preceding incident? Only time will tell; but time and precedence have never proven to be kind and/or just to victims of sex crimes.
In a previous editorial, headlined ‘Castrate them!’ this newspaper advanced a theory of castration being the only solution to reverse, and perhaps halt the escalation of sex crimes in the society, which drove former social services minister, Priya Manickchand to enact stern legislation that the Government would provide justice to victims and a deterrent to perpetrators.
This has not impeded the deviants and such incidences have accelerated, with almost no justice for the victims. So the call for castration of sexual deviants is once more being made by this publication.
Perhaps only then will this bestial practice of sexual predators who take advantage of Guyana’s lax justice system to prey on society’s helpless and vulnerable victims come to a halt.
