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When will this ever end?

Opinion & Analysis
Rape is a serious crime against women which may sometimes never make it to a newspaper as a news item.

Rape is a serious crime against women which may sometimes never make it to a newspaper as a news item.

SATURDAY DIALOGUE with ROPAFADZO MAPIMHIDZE

It is an intimate crime that has long term emotional scars if not dealt with expeditiously.

It is, however, more scary when victims of rape, are minors, who look up to the perpetrators for protection.

This week, a young woman from Tynwald North near Westgate called me and told me about a dreadful rape case that is happening in Epworth.

This involves a father who has been raping her six year old daughter ever since she was four.

The young woman had gone with her mother to Epworth to visit a relative when they were told about this matter.

The father of this child is said to have once been arrested but was released before the matter had been at the courts.

This actually means that he was free to continue raping his daughter, because the police had not followed procedures when dealing with such matters.

Some people allege that the father paid policemen some money as a bribe so that he does not face a jail term.

The informant called this writer and instantly referred the matter to Shamwari Yemwanasikana, an NGO that deals with girl child sexual abuse.

Reports from the NGO say the father of this minor has been arrested, but it is everybody’s wonder as to why this matter took two years before action was taken.

Staistics in Zimbabwe estimate that at least one in four women has been or will be a victim of sexual assault at least once in her lifetime.

Although there has been awareness around the matter over the past two decades, there are still many unreported cases.

Most rapists are not the scruffy tramps that tilt bins and scrounge for food.

These are men who are sometimes respected people in our communities, who drive nice company cars, good houses and have beautiful wives.

But behind all these goodies lie some deceitful individuals that flex their muscles and overpower women and minors into sexual submission which can run unnoticed for many years.

Most reports are ironically committed by a man the woman knows . . . a fact society is not willing to accept.

Six months ago, I saw mother of this child being taught how to drive by the alleged rapist and a year later she had given birth to a fourth child.

It was such a difficult thing for me to comprehend because whilst I had the power to report the matter, I somehow felt powerless.

I informed a police officer at some police post in Harare who said that I should get the man’s name. But it was a difficult matter because these people were new to the area and I did not want to raise eyebrows.

However, when I finally got his name, the man had deserted his family and moved in with a girlfriend out of Harare.

I then asked the mother why it had taken her so long to make a report about this matter.

She responded saying that it would have meant losing a breadwinner if he was to be jailed.

But she had already lost her husband to another woman. Jobless as she was, she moved to somewhere in Kuwadzana with her parents and the case went cold.

Generally, we want to feel safe so we want to believe that rapists have a particular profile as though they are easy to identify like wearing long coats, live under bridges or hangout in vacant buildings.

Sometimes we also think that rapists have red eyes due to alcohol and drugs but that is not true.

A rapist can be anyone . . . a father, a grandfather, an uncle, a neighbour, a brother or even a son.The vast majority of rapists are known to the victim.

We live in a culture where we are taught that women have choices about their lives and that they are responsible for what happens to them.

If you are beaten, you’re said to have incited it, if you’re raped you’re said to have invited it. But we all know that these things run very deep in our patriarchal cultures.

From the time a child is very, very small, they are taught how to be responsible for the things that may happen in their life both positive and negative. So when a rape situation occurs, usually what goes through a victim’s mind is what I did that was wrong.

It’s not only the victim who blames herself. Society is also quick to blame her as well.

The innocence of children is also questioned. The police may sometimes blame a four year old girl for seducing her perpetrator who is an adult.

Rape is a devastating crime. Some women are badly injured. Some become pregnant. Some contract HIV. But the emotional trauma can be worse than any physical injury.

Women who are raped have nightmares, panic attacks, waves of self-doubt, an overwhelming sense of distrust.

The lives of women who are raped are forever changed.

A woman alone instinctively bolts the doors and windows even on a sweltering summer night. For most women, such precautions become second nature.

Ask a woman what she does to protect herself and she’ll tick off a list of specifics: never leaving a building without her keys in hand, looking over her shoulder in the parking lot, scanning faces on an elevator, avoiding parking terraces.

Yet, despite all the precautions, women are still at risk.

It seems as though we just keep having more and more things that we have to watch out for and more and more freedoms we’re losing just because of our gender When will this ever end?