Yesterday I sat quietly on the back deck in the sun, reading the
NYTimes, drinking ginger ale, and was suddenly confronted with this staggering statistic:
A new study in The American Journal of Public Health, expected to be published Thursday online, estimates that nearly two million women have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with women victimized at a rate of nearly one every minute.
One every minute. In the time it took me to read the article, 2 or 3 women were raped. In the time it will take me to write this blog post, another 20 or more will suffer that crime. Let's put that in the correct frame: In the time it will take me to write this blog post, men will rape another 20 or more women in the Congo. And not just women:
The study’s authors believe the rape problem may be worse than their study suggests. The findings are based on survey results from females of reproductive age, but many reports and witness accounts have shown that armed men often gang-rape young girls—some even toddlers—and women in their 70s and older, in addition to a growing number of men and boys. Also, many rape victims never report being assaulted because of the shame and stigma. In Congo, countless women have been abandoned by their husbands after being raped.
"Armed men often gang-rape young girls—some even toddlers…." I just can't get my head around that. A gang of men attacking a toddler. Why? What do the men involved get out of that inordinate aggression? I am at a loss.
Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which has sent doctors to Congo to treat rape victims, said that there were “some limitations in the methodology, such as the sampling methods and the sample sizes” of the new rape study. But he argued that “the important message remains: that rape and sexual slavery have become amazingly commonplace in this region of the D.R.C., and have defined this conflict as a war against women.”
A war against women. Yes, indeed. Again, why? I don't know what to do with this information, besides share it. I'm not sure what use there is in mere consciousness-raising without a plan of action for change, but I also can't simply take in these facts without broadcasting them to the world: THIS IS HAPPENING. RIGHT NOW. ON OUR PLANET. TO WOMEN—WOMEN LIKE ME, LIKE YOU, OR LIKE YOUR MOTHER/SISTER/DAUGHTER/LOVER IF YOU'RE A MAN. I don't at this moment see a way to directly affect the situation in the Congo, but I can't be a part of the not-telling, either. Maybe if everyone tells it enough, we can make it stop.
1 comment:
Yes. And if we have a sister, a wife, a daughter, a granddaughter, we cannot be silent.
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