We have to break the cycle of sexual violence

There are many variables — including peer group and the culture of any given society — but there are some commonalities, too. Anger runs deep for many, as does a tendency to depersonalise victims of violence and an inability to show empathy. A great number of perpetrators manage to self-justify their actions and blame the victim. These are not attractive traits by any standard. And when they become overlaid with misogyny and patriarchy, they metastasise into tumours of entitlement and impunity. And more rapes. It is important to state the obvious caveat that the vast majority of people who were abused as children do not grow up to be abusers themselves.

At the same time, the growing awareness that many rapists were once children who suffered sexual abuse — rather than springing, fully formed and evil, from the womb — is a significant insight. It is one that turns the mirror towards the kind of societies — like ours — in which serial offenders brutalise thousands of women and children every year.

Brutalisation begets brutalisation, and the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we will be able to develop strategies to turn the tide on this scourge and make South Africa a safe place for all who live in.

One of the many afterlives of apartheid has been an unspoken legacy of dehumanisation, along with an extreme and violent patriarchy, for all classes and all races. Damaged men turn their rage onto vulnerable women and children.

This week experts described South Africa as a traumatised and damaged country. “We are seeing these issues through perpetual generational violence,” said

Patric Solomons, director of Molo Songololo.

“We as South Africans have a broken psyche and are dysfunctional,” said psychologist Dr Giada del Fabbro.

Recognising the roots of violent misogyny is not a call to excuse rape — rapists must be held accountable for their violence and the cruelty and pain they inflict on others.

As a society, however, we need develop ways of recognising each other’s humanity, of raising our children with love, and of recognising that every human being should be treated with dignity.

We need to reduce the levels of rage that some of us carry around with us, along with the tendency to inflict pain on others to assuage the pain that we ourselves have.

We need to give communities more resources, such as social workers and counsellors, who may be able to defuse the build-up of anger.

We need to be able to train ourselves to find more productive outlets for fury than taking it out on those who are weaker. And we need to speak up and protect the weak from those who abuse them.

At the same time, we need a police force that is properly equipped with the specialised skills of ace investigators and forensic psychologists, who can track and arrest serial rapists.

The police need all the resources they can muster to stop this scourge — not only to stop the rapists but also to reduce the number of victims, at least some of whom are at risk of perpetuating the cycle of violence.

The price we pay as a society for such extreme levels of violence is unacceptably high.

In all classes and all races, damaged men turn their rage onto vulnerable women and children