Review penalty for rape, sexual abuse

SHOCKING stories of cruelty, rape and other violence against women are hitting the mainstream media.
Over the last several months, the news pages had been scattered by rape stories involving young girls, young women, housewives and even elderly women.
Last month alone, The National has reported more than 10 rape cases out from the courts.
Their attackers were both young and older men who were either intoxicated or under the influence of marijuana.
A good number of them are family members and relatives.
The media, almost on a daily basis, provide a rich source of data on rape that form part of the evidence base for the prevalence and pervasiveness of rape as a social problem.
Often quoting police records and other sources and going by the level of coverage compared to other crimes, it provides a worrisome evidence that rape is a serious social issue in the country.
Nearly half of reported rape victims are under 15 years of age and 13 per cent are under seven.
A report by ChildFund Australia citing former parliamentarian Dame Carol Kidu claimed 50 per cent of those seeking medical help after rape are under 16, 25 per cent are under 12 and 10 per cent are under eight.
Although recent, comprehensive data does not exist, all available evidence and many researches and report indicate that violence against women in the home and the community is pervasive.
News reports from The National in 2005/2004 say in 2004, according to police records, there were ‘324 reported murders and 563 serious sexual offences committed in the country in the first seven months of the year’.
For 2005, the national statistics released by the police showed that ‘there were 856 rape cases reported as against 998 in 2004.
It does not need a rocket scientist to work out the trend to what it is today. In the minds of most people, rape or sexual assault is an isolated event where a victim has been violated sexually by another person without his or her consent.
But this is not the whole story.
When a man decides to rape a woman, he takes so much more than her dignity; he leaves an imprint on that woman’s life that will be with her for a lifetime.
He traumatises not only his victim but the victim’s friends and family.
Rape is much more than physical injuries left on the body.
Whatever the sentence handed down by the courts can never erase the ineradicable mental scar on the victim.
Many crimes committed in Papua New Guinea, including murder, do not come to police attention because of the geographic isolation of communities, the police to population ratio, a lack of public confidence in the police and a preference among many members of the community to resolve matters outside the formal justice system.
Fear and shame often experienced by victims create additional barriers to reporting.
For those who come to report these cases, the least the survivors deserve is dignity, respect and understanding when they are brave enough to report it.
The impact of rape can be alleviated by acknowledging women as complete human beings.
We can begin by being sensitive and sensitising our organisations to the trauma of rape.
Rape should never have happened.
Our laws need to be re-looked with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for those found guilty of rape.