Full help must be given to victims of rape

THE two recent cases of very young girls under the age of 10 being raped and made pregnant has touched large numbers of people, the crime horrifying most with a fair amount of reaction showing up assumptions that do not necessarily hold water.

The police appear to have tracked down those who committed the very serious assaults, and evidence is being gathered that will ensure that when these men are brought before the courts they are very likely to be convicted.

The judiciary is quite able to establish whether the evidence is adequate, which is why it needs to be good, and then quite able to figure out how many years the rapists need to be in jail.

And once in jail, the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services, with their modern approach to those who have forfeited their liberty, will have those years to get these men to recognise the magnitude of their crimes, and to give them the guidance they need to lead a much better life when they finally return to society.

All that is largely automatic and can be left to the police, National Prosecuting Authority, the judiciary and the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services.

What is not automatic is the sort of help that the young girls need and deserve. So far the Ministry of Health and Child Care, backed by the professionals from the Social Welfare Ministry, have given the girls high level medical treatment, and have started the process of healing, a process that needs to be done properly.

Vice President and Minister of Health and Child Care Constantino Chiwenga on World Children’s Day stressed both the need to catch and punish those responsible, but perhaps more importantly to ensure that the girls are helped to overcome these assaults and are able to lead a largely normal and long life. Those are the correct priorities. The rapist must never be allowed to win by inflicting permanent damage.

This fairly obviously goes beyond just the pure medical treatment. It will involve a lot of professional care for both the girls and their families.

Life will not ever be the same again, but there is no need for the violence that was inflicted on them to destroy the rest of their lives, as some commentators have possibly suggested is the case.

In many ways, the way people regard rape as opposed to other crimes of severe violence shows the need for both changing some ideas in society and making sure that the victims of rape understand that they are victims of violent assault, not “sexual abuse”, but rather very serious physical assault.

The prison service understands that perfectly, since it locks rapists up with other very violent criminals.

When someone is very seriously assaulted in other crimes, such as those that lead to charges of attempted murder or the more violent end of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, no one suggests that the victim’s life has been destroyed.

They need, and get, the medical attention they require to have their wounds treated, and might well need some physical rehabilitation to cope with body damage.

But generally they are able to carry on with their lives although there will in many cases be some physical scaring, but very little psychological scaring.

What is especially worrying is how many other girls have been assaulted. The particular horror of the two presently in the headlines largely arises because they were at the lower edge of the distribution of the age of puberty, so the assaults led to pregnancy.

But we need to think about just how many other girls whose age of puberty is further along the distribution curve have been the victims of severe assault, or who were assaulted in other circumstances that did not lead to pregnancy.

We see some of these cases in our courts, and the automatic judicial process of dealing with the perpetrators comes into force and they go and think about life for many years in jail. But are the girls given all the help they need, at least after the initial medical treatment?

There is also the problem that a fair number of these assaults are not reported immediately.

We frequently hear in court cases that the girl was reluctant to report to a responsible adult, sometimes because of the serious threats made by the rapists and sometimes because they must be very confused and very upset.

Yet the sooner they can be helped the easier it will be to help them overcome and deal with the violence that was inflicted upon them.

The victim of assault is never at fault; no one asks to be knifed, beaten to a pulp, shot or raped and all assaults, especially these more serious ones, need to be reported as quickly as possible.

The police have put in the training and procedures so that victims of rape are treated properly, just as victims of other violent crimes are properly treated, and the special medical care that rape victims need is laid on rapidly, often important since that care usually helps in the gathering of evidence that can lead to identifying arresting the criminal.

It is just the same in say a knife attack; if the police can move quickly because they know that happened it is a lot easier to catch the criminal, than trying to follow up six months later.

Parents and guardians have the duty, as do grandparents and others in the extended family, to make sure that all children are willing to talk about assault they suffer.

If a child is hurt someone in the family needs to be told and reports made to the police, not just to catch the criminal involved, but also to protect others and make it clear to all violent criminals that they cannot away with their crime.

And the sooner the report is made the sooner the required medical and other help can be given to those assaulted. There is no need to prolong suffering.