Political Rape and Sexual Assault Victims

For many years women have been viewed as less than a human being. She is treated in such a way that she does not have a place in the society. Her rights are robbed off by the superiors who are the men. Cases of rape and sexual assault are now, more than ever, at an alarming state in the United States of America.

According to statistics from the Justice Department, a rape or sexual assault case is reported every five minutes.

This has called for more attention nationwide from the concerned citizens who are either affected directly or indirectly. There are many times when the victims of these animosities fail to report their perpetrators to the authority due to fear of victimization from the society and threats from the assaulter. In most cases, the victim is left helpless and traumatized while the perpetrator is left free and loose to continue victimizing others or even the same victim over long period of time. In most cases, these are the reasons: women are portrayed as liars, their perpetrators give lame excuses in court, increased male chauvinism and gender inequality is evident, intolerable judic

ial systems and trauma and fear of the rapist re-attacks and threats makes women and children feel that safety measures are therefore a necessity.

Those victims who are courageous enough to file a report are further victimized by the court. According to Crockett, women have faced a series of injustices (Crockett 2016). It is engraved in the minds of people that women are liars. The society and the judges at large are hard to convince that the petitioner was sexually harassed or even raped. The judge will call upon tangible evidence or eyewitnesses to try and understand the victim’s situation. The judge may choose to do away with it and accuse the victim of lying and possibly sentence the victim some months in jail. This is the main reason as to why most victims will never report these cases.

In addition, in the Code of Hammurabi, both the victim and the perpetrator faced a death sentence unless the victim was a virgin. In the early Hebrew law, both the victim and the perpetrator were also sentenced to death except for the woman if she screamed for help. To be sincere, the law enforcement officials tend not to agree in the rape victim’s story. According to Kaplan, personal discipline and respect for the opposite sex will shape our morals and the society at large (Kaplan 2018).

This rape culture has been cultivated mainly by the rapist and the society who turn against the victims. The accused may say that it was not rape and that it was consensual. This leaves the victim rather helpless. To some extent, the accused turns the victim’s evidence down before the jury claiming that the accuser is confused about the incident. Such a case would be dismissed on the ground that she cannot remember the incident. Rapists use various reasons to justify their actions. They may say the victim was “inviting” them, acting in a very seductive manner, or wearing revealing clothes. One will wonder how dressing and sexual harassments interrelate to an extent of raping someone. In society, male chauvinism “loosely” means a man can abuse, harass women sexually and even rape them without getting any punishment. In the courts, there are fewer female judges, leading to show that the males have dominated everything and no one is able to rule against them.

A man can go under punished because the judge may favor him over the victim. In 2016, a Federal Court Judge Robin Camp allegedly asked the victim of his rape case, “Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together?” (Hassan & Willingham 2016). The punishment rate for rape and sexual harassment would be higher if more female judges took such cases. In the recent sexual abuse case of Larry Nassar, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced him to 40 to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing over 160 women, including Olympic Gold medalist, Simone Biles (Eltahawy 2018). In the places of work, some people look down upon females and they are not given equal chances to the male. If a woman is raped or sexually harassed by the male coworker, she is not supposed to disclose the information to the others. If she does, she then is likely to become an outcast in that society. One lives with humiliation where one is expected to perform her duty.

The government, which is entrusted by the citizens to make the right judgment is not working according to the expectation of the people. Some of the judges are sentencing mediocre penalties to the guilty party. According to Marina Koren (Koren 2016), Judge Aaron Persky gave his ruling upon a bias and did not give the right judgment in the case where Brock Turner was accused of assault with intent to commit rape. Rape is defined by the U.S Department of Justice, as the penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim (U.S Department of Justice 2017). The accused person should have been sentenced to 14 years, but Judge Persky only sentenced Turner to six months, three months on the count of good behaviour (Koren 2016). This shows that the court is not taking the cases of rape and sexual harassment seriously. The offended person feels that her rights are being denied and the trust one had to the court is no more. The judges should give the required judgment to warn any other person who may be planning to sexually harass another person. The judges of the United States of America should show respect to the offended persons in giving the right judgment.

According to Herman, most of the victims are living in trauma and fear of being assaulted again by the people who abused them in the first place (Herman 2015). The government should offer full protection to people who are the witness of rape cases so as they are not victimized by the accused person. When the accused person is found guilty, he is supposed to serve his full jail term without any fine. When the accused person is let free he may go to avenge the victim or to the family member of the victim. With the advanced technology, people can report different cases without being disclosed to the public.

There are online platforms where victims of rape and sexual assault can report their cases. In the court, only the evidence collected is used in the case. This makes it impossible for the victim being harassed by their perpetrator. The people involved in the rape cases and sexual harassment should not share the information with other people to avoid tampering with the evidence. When the victim is assured of her security or her privacy she can interact with other people without any fear of being victimized in the society.With the rise in rape cases and sexual harassment of people, different people are forming groups to convey the information to the society, educating people about the impact and the destruction it is causing to the people. The victims are affected socially and psychologically when they are abused. With the groups of people trying to reach out to and share their real-life experience, there is hope for people who had no choice but to hide from the world. The poem, songs, and other artwork are being used to raise awareness of the people.

There are some ways that people can get help from some society and other organizations. According to Scott and Christina, one can get some help from Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, where one is able to get some assistance (RAINN 2017). With the awareness being spread to all people, one can interact with other people in the workplace and in the society safely and comfortably.

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