Rape in India

In certain communities in South Asia, the low status of girls has to be compensated for by the payment of a dowry by the parents of the girl to the husband at the time of marriage. This has resulted in a number of dowry crimes, including mental and physical torture, starvation, rape, and even the burning alive of women by their husbands and/or in-laws in cases where dowry payments are not met.

The biggest contributor of this phenomenon is the role of men. Often times, men are the ones that helped create how a women should act and be perceived. Consensus are altered to stand against the victims when such comments are made: “her skirt is too short; she has too much makeup; she should not go out at nine at night.” These comments make people wonder if those women actually deserve those treatments. In a banned Indian documentary “India’s Daughter”, a woman Jyoti Singh, a graduating medical school student, got raped by a group of guys, and was tortured to death by constantly stabbing a metal stick through her vagina into her intestines. In the documentary, one of the rapist, Mukesh Singh, was interviewed for his thoughts on the evil actions he had taken. He said: "When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have dropped her off after ‘doing her’, and only hit the boy." Later, he said that girls should be responsible for the rape. A good girl does not walk around in the dark, go to

The documentary, Rape in the Fields, explores the experiences of women farm workers who are either documented or undocumented immigrants. Unfortunately, many of the men that these women work with take advantage of that fact by using it as a threat in order for them to commit sexual assault towards these women. The issues of “unwelcome” and “involuntary” actions, power and powerless, vulnerability, and receiving help for these women are all portrayed within this documentary. As defined in the presentation, “sexual conduct is unwelcomed whenever the person subjected to it considers it unwelcome.”

Freda Adler once said, “Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused.” Women should not have to go thru so much pain and agony, and our voices should be heard and expressed throughout the countries. After watching India’s Daughter, a young college student that just wanted to live her dream to become something great, her life span was short lived due to 6 men raping her, by pulling her intestines out, and thrown off a moving bus.

While watching this film it truly opened my eye to the violence that occurs to females. I know this issue has been around, but never realized the severity of it until this film. My knowledge prior to watching is that women is not treated with the same respect as men. In society women are viewed as the weaker gender and violence towards them are usually swept under the rug and not seem as a big deal. I am aware that women usually do not report the issue because they are afraid. What was most surprising to me is that in third world countries violence such as rape, are not even considered to be serious. The higher authorities are aware that rape occurs, but usually do nothing about the situation. Men can simply get away with their acts because

Rape culture extends across the globe. In 2012, a group of men gang-raped a young woman and assaulted her friend aboard a moving bus in New Delhi, India. The crime was horrific. And yet, there were some within the country who chose to blame the victims instead of the perpetrators. Asaram Bapu, a self-realized saint from India with approximately 40 million disciples said, “The victim’s daughter is as guilty as her rapists…She should have called the culprits brothers and begged before them to stop…This could have saved her dignity and life. Can you clap with one hand? I don’t think so” (Herald). Then in 1995, during the Bosnian War and the Bosnian genocide, the violence assumed a gender-targeted form through the use of rape. It is estimated that 50,000 women were raped. A year prior during the Rwandan genocide, known as the 100-day genocide, it is estimated that 500,000 women were raped. During the times when these genocides were taking place, rape and sexual violence was seen as just another part of war, but not seen as a crime. Thousands and thousands of women were raped and will never obtain the justice they deserve for their perpetrators’

In her article on the lack of justice for rape victims in Afghanistan, Noorjahan Akbar says that Afghani society is “a society in which being raped is a bigger shame that raping. Rape will not vanish until we have combated the culture of rape, which treats women only worthy for their virginity or because they are the honor and property of the men in the family.” This is very likely the underlying cause of most of the

Wartime rape is a topic that should have international attention and perpetrators should be held accountable. That should be obvious, however, that’s my opinion generated from growing up in a “first world” (developed, capitalist, with an industry based infrastructure) country, with work and education opportunities, predominately Christian ideology and with structured rules defining what’s illegal. Inhabitants of “third world” or developing countries have a significantly different environment and a low level of accountability to established governmental control. They face high levels of poverty, low economic development, and inadequate healthcare, prone to an unstable government, have high birth rates and lack a middle-class population.

Attention Getter: What is rape? By definition provided by Justice.gov, “Rape is the penetration, no matter how slight, by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” A majority of rapes, go unreported for often times the offender is someone to victim knew. Transforming: A Rape Culture says that if the perpetrator was a spouse or lover seventy-five percent of the time the victimizations go unreported, seventy-one

Furthermore, we do see gendercide occurring few years after a baby girl is born. In some places, female infanticide is frequently occurring in the early years of the unwanted child. In regions of India, a fair amount of girl does not live past puberty because of child abuse and neglecting. There is also an imbalance in infant mortality rate of boys and girls.

Before the emergence of the Westernized “anti-rape” movement, there was a distinctly rape supportive discourse in our society, supported by myths and justifications for the act of raping another human being. The resulting trauma for the victims of rape was greatly ignored as society

Female infanticide has been accepted for centuries in many countries, and is more prominent in India and China than in any other countries around the world. It is illegal in India, however it is reported by Unicef that up to 50 million girls and women are “missing” in India as a result of systemic sex discrimination.

An article released by the BBC entitled “Horrors of India’s Brothels Documented” brought this shocking global issue to my attention. The article provides information about a young Indian girl who was only 11 when she was sold into sex slavery by her neighbor (who had persuaded her family to let her go with him to Mumbai); she was taken from her impoverished village in West Bangel. Brutally raped the first night she arrived in a brothel, Guddi is only one of 20,000 sex workers in that specific area [Kamathipura] (2013). The article elaborates on the history of sex slavery in India. It points out that laws have recently been put into place against human trafficking. However, the laws are not being strongly enforced due to the sheer number of

Almost two-thirds of sexual assault is committed by someone known to the victim. Yet rape and sexual assault are one of the least reported crime in the united states with only 39% of attacks being reported to the police each year. Rape culture has been present throughout history in the entire world and sadly it continues to exist. Rape culture needs to be talked about more openly, so victims are not afraid to accuse their rapist or attacker. Communities should come together to create a culture of care and stop shaming men, women, and children into victim blaming. Educating society about what is right and wrong while offering victims support can potentially prevent rapes from occurring and putting the sick people who committed the crime into prison.

The current society that w live in is full of crimes and people that go against the laws. Many people commit crimes despite the punishments set for those crimes. A crime is any act that goes against the law ordering it or any act that is omitted against a law ordering it. Laws are set of rules that are set to govern people on how they conduct themselves. This paper will discuss one crime which is sexual assault. The paper will look into rape and defilement. Rape is any engagement of sexual act with a person who has not agreed to it. Defilement is still a form of sexual engagement with a person who has not agreed to it but defilement is for those that are under the age of 18 years (juveniles). It involves engaging in sexual acts with a person who under law is still a child. The