preview

Cause And Effect Essay On Rape

Satisfactory Essays

Regardless of the motivations behind rape, there is no question that it has a lasting impact on communities. For women and young girls who are raped, the event can put them in an even more vulnerable position than they found themselves in before the incident. Although sexual violence has touched women from all walks of life, soldiers primarily target women who work on farms (Maedl 2011, 138). There is a massive social and emotional toll rape causes for women, as one described “If you are a girl [who has been raped], your parents will start mistreating you...You will never get married. They will throw you away because you are not worth anything; you lose all your value because nobody will marry you” (Kelly et al. 2012, 290). Women are valued less in Congolese culture to begin with. Many women are defined by their husbands and the amount of value placed on them by the people around them. A woman’s identity lies in the role as a caretaker and mother. When women are assaulted, men see them as less capable of these roles. In some cases, women cannot take on the role of a mother because of their physical injuries. Many are left experiencing pelvic, lumbar, abdominal pain, and reproductive abnormalities (Brown 2012, 34). The most common injury as a result of rape is a fistula, lesions in the genital tissue that cause urine and/or stool incontinence, which ostracize women from their communities because they don’t have the resources to wash several times a day (Maedl 2011, 136).

Get Access