RAPE  (Part I)

 

The raping of women, children and yes; even men is a hideous crime and the criminals who commit these crimes should be severely punished. But how do we define rape?

 

Rape is the commission of unlawful sexual intercourse or unlawful sexual intrusion. The word intrusion also means anal extrusion and in my opinion, it can also mean oral intrusion if a man’s penis is used since it also is an unlawful intrusion which obviously applies to any part of a human body.

 

Canada doesn’t charge offenders with rape if they sexually attack someone sexually because in the Canadian Criminal Code, the wording of this offence is different.  Rape is defined as sexual assault. That covers any kind of illicit sexual crime such as unlawful intrusion of a man’s penis into a woman’s vagina or in anyone’s anus or a man’s penis in someone’s mouth. A woman may be convicted of sexually assaulting another woman. Furthermore, a spouse may be convicted of rape if the perpetrator forces the other spouse to have nonconsensual sex.

 

The penalty in Canada for a first offender committing this crime can be up to ten years in prison however if the victim is severely injured in the process, the offender can also be charged with the crime of aggravated assault and the penalty for that crime can be imprisonment for up to 14 years. If the person is a repeat offender and considered a risk to society, he can be declared a dangerous offender and will be sentenced to prison for an indefinite time which could mean the rest of his life.

 

Sexual intercourse with a person who has not reached the age of consent is known as statutory rape. The age of consent for sexual intercourse varies depending on state law, but is no higher than 18 in any state. In Canada, it is now 16 but it was previously 14. Under most state laws, the younger the victim is, the greater the punishment. Statutory rape laws traditionally treated men or boys as the prospective offenders and young women or girls as prospective victims. However, some jurisdictions have enacted gender-neutral statutory rape laws. The US also typically treats sexual intercourse as rape if the victim is considered incapable of giving consent for a reason other than age. For example, if a person has sexual intercourse with someone who is drugged or asleep, or who is mentally retarded, that person may be found guilty of rape.

 

In the United States, the FBI rates rape as the second most violent crime to murder. The penalties for rape are determined by the individual states. Missouri, in 1964, was the last state to execute someone for rape. Many states had such laws on the books until 1977 when the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty could not be imposed in the rape of an adult woman. Louisiana drafted its child-rape law in 1995 and is the only state with such a specific law that could execute such offenders Florida and Montana have capital-rape laws on their books, but prosecutors don't use them when dealing with the sentencing of such offenders.

 

Obviously executing a child rapist would increase the risk of the child’s life since the rapist loses nothing in murdering the child. That is also one of the reasons why execution an offender who rapes an adult isn’t executed although the Supreme Court of the United States said that it is contrary to the US Constitution which guarantees that no one will be subject to cruel and unusual punishment. What that actually means that as horrendous as rape is, it doesn’t rate the death penalty.

 

Because sexual assaults are such personal and intrusive crimes, violators consistently receive longer prison terms and more restrictions on their freedoms once released than offenders who commit other serious assaults, including those that are life-threatening.

 

In Texas, the maximum penalty for ‘Forcible Rape’ or ‘Aggravated Sexual Assault’ is a sentence of life in prison. If convicted of rape, the penalties in the all of the states in the US can vary according to circumstances and evidence provided during the trial. Across the United States, the average prison time for rape is between 8 and 9 years although some rapist convicted of that crime have spent far more years in prison. In general, in the US, the sentences for rape/sexual assault are in the same range of penalties for crimes such as robbery, extortion, racketeering and major drug convictions that carry far greater sentences than those for crimes like burglary or even manslaughter.

 

Recently state and federal lawmakers have moved aggressively toward imposing stronger penalties against those who are found guilty of statutory rape. That kind of rape is when the offender has sexual intercourse with someone who is underage. Statutory rape is a crime in which the offender has sex with an underage person without using threats or force towards the victim.

 

Florida has attracted the attention of lawmakers from other states with its Jessica's Law, which imposes stronger punishments as part of its mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for those who commit certain sex crimes against children, including the conviction of statutory rape of a child. Massachusetts has also passed similar laws based on Jessica's Law.

 

As part of these more severe penalties, those convicted of statutory rape will face a minimum of a 10-year sentence if the child was under 12 years of age and the accused is at least 5 years older than the victim; or if the child is between the ages of 12 and 16 and the accused is 10 or more years older; or if the accused has a criminal history and is supposed to be a ‘mandatory reporter’ (a person who because of his/her profession has contact with children and should be reporting crimes committed against children). These mandatory sentences are the minimum, the starting point; the sentences can be added to from there. The concept behind minimum sentencing is to deter would-be rapists, and provide punishment to those who are convicted.

 

In Canada, traditional statutory rape laws have been replaced with specific laws against a variety of sexual offenses concerning children. For example, the Criminal Code provides that any person who, for sexual purposes, touches any part of the body of a person under the age of 14 is guilty of the offense of sexual interference. The charge cannot be defended by claiming consent by the minor or mistake concerning the age of the victim. However, if the accused person is between the ages of 12 and 16 and the victim is less than two years younger than the accused and consented to the activity, it is not considered a crime. The Canadian Criminal Code states it is not a defence that an accused believed that a complainant was 16 years of age or more at the time the offence was alleged to have been committed unless the accused took all reasonable steps to ascertain the age of the complainant.

 

In Canada, if a relationship of trust, authority or dependency exists in a sexual relationship between an adult and a child, it will still depend on each situation. This relationship has been interpreted by the courts very broadly. For example, it was found to exist in one case where a man lived in the same apartment as a 14 year old girl and her family and he was treated by them as a member of the family. In another case a 14 year old boy of limited mental capacity ‘taught’ a 16 year old boy of far more severely limited mental capacity everything he knew about sex. The law presumes there is exploitation of a young person if an accused is in a position of trust or authority, even if the sexual activity is truly consensual.

 

Gang Rapes

 

 

A Swiss woman who was on a cycling trip in central India with her husband was gang-raped by eight men in March 2013. The attack came three months after the fatal gang-rape of a woman aboard a New Delhi bus that also outraged Indians and everyone else in the world. She and her husband apparently suffered no major injuries.

 

The 2012 Delhi Gang Rape Case involves a rape and murder that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood located in the southern part of New Delhi, when a 23-year-old female physiotherapy intern was beaten and gang raped in a bus in which she was travelling with her male companion. There were only six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman. One of the rapists thrust an iron rod deep into her vagina. The woman died from her injuries thirteen days later despite undergoing emergency treatment in Singapore. Five of the rapists are facing the death penalty. I don’t know what will be the sentence for the young offender.

The district sessions court at the Rangareddy court complex in LB Nagar in India on March 25, 2013 convicted three auto drivers for the gang-rape of a 23-year-old Education student near Shamirpet in 2011, and they were each sentenced to a 10-year jail term for the offence for raping the student in Majidpur near Shamirpet.

An Indian college girl on March 20, 2013 committed suicide by setting herself on fire after because she was raped by four youths near Getalsud dam on the outskirts of Ranchi. The victim told the police before she succumbed to her burn injuries in a hospital, that her lover Vritranjan Prasad and three of his friends took her near the dam on March 17, raped her one by one and branded her as a ‘prostitute  before they dumped her there alone.  

In August last year, an 11-year-old girl was abducted and gang raped in Sikar. She had suffered serious injuries and was brought to the JK Lon hospital in Jaipur, where she underwent 14 minor and major surgeries. When she was admitted to the JK Lon hospital, she was in a critical state as she suffered from a complete perineal tear.

A 20-year-old Dalit (lower class) woman in Amritsar on March 26, 2013 told the police that she was forcibly dragged into a car and raped by three men in the moving vehicle the previous night while she was on way home from work. The accused played loud music on the car stereo as they drove around the city for an hour, allegedly taking turns to rape the young woman, the police said, adding that she was later thrown out of the vehicle near the city's Cantonment area. The girl in her complaint to the police said that she was returning home from work around 7.30 pm and was on way to take an auto-rickshaw when two men forced her into a car near the Suraj Chanda Tara cinema. Another person got into the car a little later and one of them put a handkerchief on her mouth after which she fell unconscious. The girl alleged that the three accused, whom she identified as Aditya, Rocky and Abhi, took turns to repeatedly rape her. Based on the victim's statement the accused have been booked under section 363 (punishment for kidnapping) and 376 (2) (g) (gang rape) of the Indian Penal Code.

A new law enacted by the government of India has increased the prison sentences for rape from the existing seven to 10 years to a maximum of 20 years. It also provides for the death penalty in extreme cases of rape that result in death or leave the victim in a coma.

I have chosen to put emphasis of the gang rape incidents in India because it appears that even though the citizens of India are outraged and the government is increasing the penalties for rape, there are still rapists who don’t give a damn about the consequences of being found guilty of rape.

A sessions court at Dindoshi, India in March 2013, convicted an auto rickshaw driver for abducting and raping a mentally challenged girl in 2008. Nandlal Yadav has been sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labour.

 

 

Why do rapists rape their victims?

I will first tell you want motivates criminals to rape their victims.

Anger rapists

 

The aim of this kind of rapist is to humiliate, debase and hurt their victim. They express their contempt for their victim through physical violence and profane language. For these rapists, they use sex as a weapon to defile and degrade the victim so that the rape constitutes the ultimate expression of their anger. This rapist considers rape the ultimate offense they can commit against the victim other than killing them. Anger rape is characterized by physical brutality to such a degree, that much more physical force is used during the assault than would be necessary if the intent were simply to overpower the victim and achieve penetration. This type of offender attacks their victim by grabbing, striking and knocking the victim to the ground, beating them, tearing off their clothes and raping them. They know that when they subject their victim to such an attack, they cause the victim to experience a high degree of fear and this excites the rapist which adds to his pleasure.

 

Power rapists

For these rapists, rape becomes a way to compensate for their underlying feelings of inadequacy and feeds their issues of mastery, control, strength, authority and capability. The intent of the power rapist is to assert their competency. The power rapist relies upon verbal threats, intimidation with a weapon, and only uses the amount of force necessary to subdue the victim. The power rapist tends to have fantasies about sexual conquests and rape. They may believe that even though the victim initially resists them, that once they overpower their victim, the victim will eventually enjoy the rape. The rapist needs to believe that the victim enjoyed what was done to her, and they may even ask the victim to meet him for a date later. Because this is only a fantasy, the rapist does not feel reassured for long by either his own performance or the victim's response. The rapist feels that he must find another victim, convinced that next victim will be ‘the right one for him’ hence; their offenses may become repetitive and compulsive. They may eventually commit a series of rapes over a short period of time because they haven’t found the ‘right one’ they have been seeking and never will either.  This is the most common type of rapist in the United States.

Sadistic rapist

For these rapists, there is a sexual association with various concepts, so that aggression and the infliction of pain is eroticized. For this rapist, sexual excitement is associated with the causing of suffering upon his/her victim. The offender finds the intentional maltreatment of his victim intensely gratifying and takes pleasure in the victim's torment, anguish, distress, helplessness, and suffering and the rapist finds the victim's struggling an erotic experience. Sadistic rape usually involves extensive, prolonged torture and restraint. Sometimes, it can take on ritualistic or other bizarre qualities. The rapist may use some type of instrument or foreign object to penetrate his/her victim. Sexual areas of the victim's body become a specific focus of injury or abuse. The sadistic rapist's assaults are deliberate, calculated and preplanned. They will often wear a disguise or will blindfold their victims. Prostitutes or other people whom they perceive to be ‘promiscuous’ are often the sadistic rapist's targets. The victims of a sadistic rapist may not survive the attack. For some offenders, the ultimate satisfaction is gained from murdering the victim.

Punishment

Rapists who do no physical harm to their victims should serve a minimum of 10 years. If the rapist injures his victim and the injuries are minor or he has made his victim pregnant, he should serve 15 years in prison. If the injuries are very serious, he should serve a minimum of 2o years in prison. If the injuries are so serious, the victim becomes bed-ridden for the rest of her life, he should serve 30 years in prison. If he tortured his victim first, his sentence should be at hard labour. If his victim dies, he should be sentenced to imprisonment for life without parole and at hard labour. In countries where the death penalty is still in force, he should be executed.

 

I have no sympathy for rapists at all. What is needed is to stop soft-headed and soft hearted judges from merely slapping these fiends on their wrists.

 

When I learn what the sentences are for the Delhi gang who raped, tortured and  murdered their victim, I will inform you as an UPDATE at the end of this article.