Over the past week not a newscast has been spoken here in Canada without mentioning the desperately unfortunate case of Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17 year-old girl who was gang-raped by four boys and then subsequently bullied by them and others until she finally committed suicide some months later. She died this past Sunday the 7th of April, 2013, leaving behind a devastated family and a nation in shock once again. Add to this news out of India in recent months about not one, but two brutal gang rapes, one on a goddamn bus after which the woman died of the trauma inflicted.
I have strong opinions on very few things, feeling in general that I know too little about a topic to weigh in on it meaningfully. I have been accused of being too wishy washy — again, from either a lack of knowledge, a lack of interest, or both. Even fewer in number are those things about which I could say I hold a firm conviction. As such, it is significant that I will put in writing on this blog the strongest conviction I perhaps hold and it is this: Rapists should be killed for their crime.
Rape is not murder. Rape is worse than murder. In rape, the victim is left to relive the trauma, terror, and helplessness again and again in their mind for the rest of their lives. It is a living hell and it can undo a person completely. Rape victims suffer unshakeable feelings of worthlessness leading to severe depression, consider and often attempt suicide, and have difficulty forming normal intimate relationships. Something that was theirs and theirs alone to give as they chose, something intensely personal, was very literally ripped from them and they were powerless to stop it. Any real feeling of secure-ness is lost forever, never to be recovered. In short, the effects are truly lifelong and devastating.
According to this informative article by Soraya Chemaly in the Huffington Post, in the U.S. 1 woman in 5 can expect to be raped in their lifetime — an astonishing 20%. This statistic doesn’t include those who suffer the torment of sexual harassment on an ongoing basis which is a much higher number without a shred of doubt.
I have known too many women who have suffered this fate, and I have learned all too painfully of the devastation it causes to their lives. I cannot abide it and no feeling person should. If ever there is put forward a law that sees rapists put to death, preferably in a lengthy and painful way, I will be there to cheer it on. I say kill them all. There are very few things in which I truly believe, but this is most definitely one of them.