Beyond Legal Remedies for Rape

                     India has earned a muddy reputation for being one of the most unsafe countries for women in the world.  There is an average of 106 rape cases per day. (The Quint) Many go unreported, while some, like Nirbhay in Delhi, Unnao or Kathua, bring forth a surge of public outrage and anguish; people feel shocked, angry and insecure. News channels air impassioned talks by women activists, newspapers run front-page news, and politicians make dutiful noises. The judiciary takes notice and announces stricter laws against the rapist.  Parents tighten vigil on their daughters’ movements. People follow up the course of the police enquiry for a while till the news moves to the back pages and slowly disappears altogether. People feel something has been done and are somewhat reassured. In some cases, the rapists are brought to book. Life moves on. And soon the newspapers pick up another rape episode in another town.

It is apparent that laws against rape alone have not been enough of a deterrent, and making them harsher has not solved the problem. Maybe we need to enquire deeper into the causes that turn a man into a rapist.  Sexual assault is a psycho-social-behavioural pathology that runs beyond a mere breach of law and must be tackled as such. What are the forces that incite sexual violence?  Who is the man-turned-demon who forces himself on vulnerable women, girl children or even infants, many times causing great physical torment and damage? Research has rubbished theories that see rape as an uncontrollable sexual urge incited by provocative dress or behaviour in the victim. This is borne out by the fact that 4 out of 10 victims are children, and the much-covered Catholic nuns and Muslim women are no exception to sexual assault.

 Empirical psychological studies have highlighted feelings, emotions and experiences quite removed from just eroticism, which play upon the mind of the rapist. Dr. Prentky, a professor of psychology at the Boston University Medical School, has given an analysis of the characteristics of close to 300 rapists, published in 1988 in The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 32 per cent of the rapists were vindictive and women haters; 11 per cent were angry with the world at large, both men and women. The researchers said the findings suggested that the more men were abused as children, the more they were likely to rape as adults. Some of the characteristics that run common in most rapists are - anger, hate, frustration and being abused as children. In the Indian context, 60.83% of cases of rape were reported from the poorer strata of society.  95% of cases of crime against women were reported from slum areas. (The Times of India) Most of the arrested perpetrators were between 18-25 years of age, many of them school and college drop-outs. 96.4% were known to the victim.

So the probable (not only) image of an average rapist that emerges from the above statistics is a youth 21 or so of age, a school dropout, belonging to a lower socio-economic strata and residing in a colony with low civic amenities. He is probably without a job or holds a low-paid job and likely underwent physical and sexual abuse in childhood. The kind of personality that emerges is a frustrated man with low self-esteem who sees no promise in his future, nurses a grudge against a society that has been brutal and unfair to him and has received little motivation or role models for character-building and higher aims. He is, at the same time, enamoured of the Bollywood movies he watches on the TV and probably on his mobile, where he escapes reality by identifying with a screen hero who rides fancy cars and romances a heroine. His hormones are raging; he lusts after what he sees on the silver screen; automobiles and girls. But he has neither the means to that lifestyle nor does the Indian society give youngsters the freedom to intermingle freely, let alone get into physical relationships. He is not working towards the achievement of a worthwhile aim. This cocktail of frustration, suppression, hopelessness and anger is a recipe for incidents of vicious pathological behaviour. The most probable victims of pent-up aggression and violence will be the most vulnerable people, i.e. women and children. Rape can be dramatic and extreme form of assertion of strength and mastery; displacement of resentment and vindication.

When we try to deal with rape only by making the punishment harsher, we are trying to treat the symptoms and not the underlying social structure and processes where the malaise lies. The rapist is not likely to be a man of sound mind who is likely to pause and assess the severity of the law before he assaults a woman. He is a deprived, bitter, angry, abused and frustrated man who finds an easy target. We need to correct our socio-economic system to ensure the necessary means for an existence consistent with basic human dignity for all, an outlook that imbibes a value system and does not brutalize youngsters and rob them of hope and fulfilment of basic needs - material, psychological and sexual. Let us look after that youngster in the slum today, lest he is pushed to become a monster we have to hang tomorrow.