Rape - Helping the victims and Prosecuting the offenders Written by Aderinale Adedeji and Arifo Opeyemi

The rate of sexual harassment keeps increasing daily, sexual harassment can be as subtle as winking to someone against his/her consent, dressing provocatively which would arouse men (female specifically), touching sensitive parts of a person without his/her consent, engaging in sexual banter against his/her consent and sexual harassment can be major such as having a carnal knowledge of him/her (rape/ forced sex), oral sex and all forms of sex. Most times, there is always a form of foreplay which a lot of people are quite negligent and these little signals then becomes a major act of rape.

Rape is the peak of all sexual harassment because, the damages it leaves are more of scars than just barely injuries sustained during forcefully treating the victim. There is a spirit that possesses men because of the nature of things they view or digest daily. The eyes are the greatest input device into the mind, it brings the mind into contact with visualizations and we tend to remember things more by images /pictorial representation. The more the mind is filled with such things the more its cravings for it, it then becomes a habitual thing which one gets entangled with by repetition hereby committing such to a long-term memory.

According to Web root an open text company in an article ‘pornography in numbers’, it is estimated that every second 28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet, everyday 37 pornographic videos are created in the United States and the list goes endlessly. This could be the genesis of unusual sexual gratifications, most times, it is assumed that this gratification might be controlled when a man is married or woman is married. What!!!, that was never a solution… it never did solve the issue on ground. This is because, the issue of rape also occurs amongst marital couples.

From the law perspective, to convict an offender of rape, some form of non consensual sexual penetration, however slight, must occur. Each instance of penetration can serve as a count of rape, as well. (FindLaw,2019). There are several forms of rape according to Law, ranging from date rape, rape of children, statutory rape and many more. (Types of rape, n.d).

There has been an increasing rape cases in Africa generally, of which the type of rape involved is a statutory rape/ Rape of children, this is quite disheartening as the most vulnerable are minors. Considering, Nigeria as a case study, rape cases occurs on a daily of which only few are reported, also only few of reported cases brings the offender to justice. The peak of disheartening is the gang rape of minors and killing them as well, this is to show the peak of inhumane acts committed in this part of the world. Many children/ minors without good guardians eventually end up dying from constant sexual assault from known members such as uncle, cousin, family friend and all, this continues because of the so-called trust of this offenders by the guardians of the victim. UNICEF reported in 2015 that one in four girls and one in ten boys in Nigeria had experienced sexual violence before the age of 18. Also, there was about 2,279 reported cases of rape and indecent assault in 2017 (Nigeria Bureau of statistics, BBC news). Even this period of the pandemic in the country, it looks just as if the cases became excessive, because over 700 rape cases were reported between January and May 2020(Muhammed muaza, The rape pandemic: A declining dark route for society, Vanguard).

This is not an explicit and into detail article, but this article seeks to see the stand point of every individual and even the government on curbing the rape menace constantly occurring in the nation. Although, this could be an arduous task as there has to be strict disciplinary measures that must be taken to punish offenders and also a recuperating therapy for the rape victim such that they would heal faster from the sexual assault.

During, the course of this year there has been increasing cases of rape in my country Nigeria, in which there are little or no feedback from the law disciplinary decision of offenders even if there is explicit stating of the law against rape. So, I decided to carry out a survey indirectly to see people verdict on the judgement that should be passed or they feel would be appropriate for rape offenders. There is so much indignation from people towards rapists, in some of counties they castrate rapists, but the fate of the rapists here in Nigeria hasn’t be decided. So, the question asked in the survey was “Punishment for rapists”. After, carrying out the survey on Facebook which is wide social media community, I got a total response of about 1,300. Considering the validity of responses, I took 46.1% of the total valid responses which was about 600.

These are my results from the survey:

Table 1: Gender of Respondents

Gender of Respondents Frequency Percent

Male 375 62.5

Female 225 37.5

Total 600 100.0

From the analysis of responses, it shows that about 62.5 of the respondents are of the male gender and 37.5 are females.

Table 2: Do you agree to punishing rapists to death?

Decision Frequency Percent

No 82 13.7

Yes 471 78.5

Undecided 47 7.8

Total 600 100

Conclusion

Rape is a condemnable act which must be looked into with serious close monitoring and the appropriate prosecution. Death is not the sole solution to dealing with offenders as very few cases of rape not well investigated would put to death even the innocent.

Although, recently it was announced that the strengthening of punishment of offenders would be life imprisonment with no fine and the least amount of years of imprisonment would be 14 years. This looks like a relief, but we look forward to its implementation.