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termination to carry through a sexual act as feeble protests are mistaken<br />
for feminine modesty.<br />
Rape victims do not seem to enjoy the unqualified sympathy of the<br />
public. The societal attitude is one that suggests that the victim is the<br />
architect of her plight, as she did not abide by the maternal warning at<br />
menarche to be beware of men. An 18 year old who visits a male acquaintance<br />
and remains with him till it is too late to get back home and<br />
accepts the man’s invitation to spend the night with him ought to know<br />
better, some would argue.<br />
Culturally, it is assumed that even an interested girl who is not a prostitute<br />
or sexually loose should play hard to get and should not readily say<br />
‘yes’ to male advances. The problem here then is that a victim’s no<br />
could potentially imply either yes or no. It becomes therefore unclear<br />
to some men whether a girl’s no is NO or not. Consequently, a rapist<br />
can argue, as some male respondents have, that his victim’s ‘mild’<br />
protests are normal, nothing to worry about. Perhaps this also partly<br />
accounts for male respondents’ reticence over rape encounters.<br />
In the course of the study we came across accounts from females who<br />
resisted physically and in the end frustrated a rapist’s attempts to rape<br />
them. However, it seems that many of the girls in our sample who were<br />
raped by community members gave up, and did not put up enough<br />
fight. While a rapist who is a stranger might threaten to kill a victim<br />
who puts up a fight, an acquaintance is unlikely to do this. It has to be<br />
remarked however that in the media accounts of rape child victims are<br />
told that if they disclosed the incident they would be killed. This however<br />
works with children who have been defiled, rather than with adults.<br />
Victims rarely report the crime and when they do the culprit is not punished<br />
severely. This knowledge does not reassure victims; rapists on the<br />
other hand are not deterred. What is more, victims reward rapists when<br />
the former later fall for the rapist. This engenders cynical attitudes, such<br />
as the perception that forced sexual intercourse with an uninterested<br />
girl would change the feelings of the victim in favour of the rapist. The<br />
extension of this logic is the practice where a girl impregnated by a rapist<br />
is forcibly married to the rapist. 1<br />
1<br />
The logic seems to be that what you sow is what you reap. The connubial prospects<br />
of an unmarried young mother are usually low, but rapists compelled to marry their<br />
victim do not necessarily make good husbands.<br />
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