When I was younger, back at the dawn of time, I believed that when I was a very old person there would be little in life that would astound me. That I would, eventually, “see it all.” I now know that isn’t true. I am astounded every day. Shocked. Dismayed. Confused. Sick (and not in the hip-hop way, but actually ill).
It’s not by the things many elderly people complain about – technology, taxes, and the “younger” generation. I am shocked, dismayed and physically ill by the same horrors that haunted me as a twenty-year old. Cruelty to animals, spousal abuse, the assault on children’s gentle souls. And rape. The taking of what is most precious and intimate by force.
The recent events in India, the gang rape of a Swedish female tourist, have reminded me once again of how little we have evolved as a human species. It doesn’t matter that the incident occurred in India, following a case three months ago when seven man, including the driver, raped a woman on a Delhi bus. It could have occurred in Miami or Vancouver. The physical geography doesn’t matter, it is the human capacity for evil that is at issue, and it is present wherever man lives.
The police in India often refuse to investigate rape cases. And the legal system is reluctant to prosecute, even when gang rape leads to a woman’s death. A spokesman for the local police department in the area where the Swedish tourist was raped blamed the woman for camping in the wrong spot. Of course, that is every woman’s dream, to be gang-raped. They should put the spot on a special tourist map.
According to government statistics, a rape occurs every 17 minutes in Canada. In the United States, it is every two minutes. These numbers are no more than guesses, since experts believe that between 60-80 percent of rape cases, whether perpetrated on women, men or children, are never reported. In the United States, considered one of the most developed nations in the world, of the small number of cases that are reported, only 25 percent of the assailants are ever arrested. A small percentage of those go to court; an even smaller number are found guilty. And for those who believe it is just the sexy that are raped, in Arkansas, for example, the youngest rape victim was less than one year old, the oldest 97.
In Canada, one of every four girls will be sexually assaulted by the time they are 18. And one out of every eight boys. Look around you. Where you work, in your family, among your friends. Count the faces, the fourth female face will confront a terror in her life that is unimaginable. Look at the young men on your son’s soccer team. It won’t take long before the numbers overwhelm you. And it won’t be strangers that take their innocence away. Seventy-percent of all rapists are known to their victims. Eighty-percent of rapes occur in the victim’s home.
I have not yet lived my allotted time, and I remain ever hopeful that in this one part of our existence we will finally say: no more.
No more.
