Christian lawyers heartless towards rape victims

THE EDITOR, Sir:

SO THE Christian lawyer, Shirley Richards, says that the key for women to deal with a rape is to report it early (Gleaner, ‘Culture of death: Rape and incest not enough to justify abortion, say Christian lawyers’, September 4, 2018).

If she believes that the first thing on the mind of a 14-year-old girl when she extricates herself from the violent attack and rape by her grandfather or a schoolyard bully is to trot down to the local police station to report it, so that they will drive her over to the clinic and pay for a morning-after pill, she is seriously deluded by religious dogma.

And then, of course, the rape victim can expect to go back to her grandfather’s home where she lives, and return to school the next day, and will suffer no further repercussions from either rapist for having reported them to the police?

The child will be traumatised, frightened, consumed by feelings of guilt and shame, and certainly will not be thinking like a self-righteous adult Christian lawyer.

And so she will get pregnant, and will be forced by the State and the Church to carry that rapist’s child to term, and live for the rest of her life with the burdensome physical, emotional, educational and personal productivity consequences of that.

Causing those horrific results of that rape isn’t very Christian to me.

PATRICK BROWNE

PO Box 6

Ocho Rios, St Ann