Reveal yourself: Expose rape accused, not their victims

When Suzette Jordan decided to go public with her identity she wanted to change the conversation about her from Park Street rape victim to Park Street rape survivor.That’s the spirit Bachi J. Karkaria is trying to encourage in her recent Times of India column asking rape survivors “with utmost sensitivity” to “reveal your identity and help cast aside the veil of misplaced disgrace.”“The crime is not hers, so why should she go through a punishment which is psychologically worse than that of the rapist? Why should she be the one whose identity is put away for life?” asks Karkaria.Then she proceeds to name the Delhi bus gang rape victim, something other Indian media have not done and the court still does not allow.[caption id="attachment_1081697" align="alignleft" width="380"] AFP[/caption]Karkaria is clearly well-intentioned but her crusade ignores the reality of the world we live in.In an ideal world Jordan or the Shakti Mills survivor or the Dalit woman from Jind should be no more ashamed of being a survivor of rape than she would have been of being the victim of a burglary. In an ideal world revealing her identity should not be an act of exceptional courage. In an ideal world Jordan going to a protest rally without a scarf around her face should not make prime time news.But it’s not an ideal world.The problem with Karkaria’s exhortation is, just like the stigma of rape, the onus of social change lands squarely in the survivor’s lap. Even though Karkaria says at the outset that coming out is ultimately the raped woman's (and her immediate family’s) decision, it’s a slippery slide to a moral expectation of activism. As if it is now our hope that rape survivors not just overcome the physical assault, the indignity of the two-finger test, the humiliation of the leering officer at the thana who does not want to file that FIR, but also set a gutsy example to the world at large.What we fail to remember in our rush to anoint rape victims and survivors as “Bravehearts” or "Nirbhayas" is none of them sought out that honour. They were all trying to do the most ordinary things – board a bus to get home from a film or have a drink with friends at a nightclub. Now as their families run from pillar to post to get justice, in a system where conviction rates are pathetic (26.4% in 2011) we also want to turn them into activists for a cause they did not seek out.Where is society’s responsibility in all this? In an article in The Telegraph, anti-trafficking activist Ruchira Gupta writes about how she was sexually assaulted, though not raped, while covering the mosque demolition in 1992. When she appeared in court, the lawyers for the defendants tried to rip her character to shreds.How could the daughter of a good family have gone to cover the demolition? Did I smoke, what kind of clothes was I wearing, did I believe in God?The judge did not stop them.Does society make an example of the cop who dismisses a woman who goes to file a complaint? Is being placed on administrative leave “no tolerance” enough? Have the authorities implemented the court directive to do away with the two-finger test? Have they laid the groundwork that makes it easier to even report rape?Rape statistics are hugely misleading because rape, unlike homicide, is so much easier to cover up.The Wall Street Journal reports that there were 24,923 cases of rape in India last year according to government statistics. Sweden has one of the highest reported rates of rape in the world – 35 times that of India. “This doesn’t mean that Sweden has more rape than other countries,” Dr. Angela Me of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime tells WSJ. Swedes just “have a very high level of consciousness about what is rape and [that] they need to report it."We are nowhere near that. Even fast track courts are not a miracle solution. In Rajasthan, where such courts were first set up, the conviction rate has remained the same – about 25 percent – since 2000. Even worse, authorities admit, according to the Indian Express, that “due to hurried trials, a fair share of convictions are overturned in the high court.”None of this creates any kind of climate conducive to coming out. And that’s just for women. As a wrenching account in The Hindu reveals, for a gay man surviving gang-rape, the struggle is even lonelier. He has little institutional or legal support. One survivor says if “I speak about this, people will forget the rape and blame me for hooking up with a stranger, especially another man”. Every time a friend mentions gay porn he shudders wondering whether the video of his rape is circulating online.Jordan says she decided to come out for the vast majority who cannot. “I want to stand up for them. I want to be their shield. I have been laughed at but I can take it,” she says.In a sense, the phrase “coming out” itself is misleading. It is true that in the LGBT movement, coming out has proven to be a hugely empowering act. It has forced corporations to acknowledge their gay and lesbian employees, to deal with them more fairly. It certainly helped bolster the arguments against Section 377 of the penal code in Delhi. But that does not mean it’s advisable to come out today, for example, in Russia just to prove a moral point.And there is certainly no excuse whatsoever in using the guts of women who do reveal their names as a fig leaf to cover up invasive reporting that all but outs a survivor’s identity. “To bang on about protecting identity endorses the social assault on the raped woman,” writes Karkaria. But to interview the night watchman at the building where the Shakti Mills rape survivor lives, a man who did not know about the incident until the reporter went to him, is hardly an act of sensitive empowerment. There is a very big difference between “coming out” and “out-ing”. “As a result, irrespective of whether the media uses the term “survivor” or “victim”, insensitive errors in reporting at the cost of the privacy of a rape survivor continue,” writes Kalpana Sharma on The Hoot.Just because the Shakti Mills survivor walked out of the hospital with her face uncovered does not mean she gave up any rights to her privacy. Speaking of the uncovered face, what about the faces of the men accused of these brutal gang-rapes as they go in and out of courtrooms? Why are they afforded the face-saving shield of hooded privacy? The initial reason to cover their faces might be to prevent prejudicing an identification parade but once that’s over what’s the point of saving their faces?While there has to be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, it’s also a fact that most of these accused will get away scot free. If the prospect of their faces splashed in the media on their way in and out of court serves as even a modest deterrent to a future rapist, that would be a welcome step in addressing what Karkaria calls “the disease of misplaced shame.”Instead of worrying about the survivor’s face, let’s remember the faces of the culprits.