Rape in Kuwait
This is a very difficult post. Rape is a terrible subject. Coolfreak in his blog IheartKuwait wrote a heartbreaking post about a young woman raped recently in Kuwait, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
Rape has been the subject of several editorials in the Kuwait Times. Rape of children, abduction and rape of young women, abduction and rape of domestic servants, rape of domestics on the job site, abduction and rape of young men. . . rape is prominent DAILY in the crime column. Rape is epidemic in Kuwait, so common that people seem to think that there is nothing that can be done.
People can wring their hands. People can moan about how wrong it is. But what is being done for the victims of rape?
In California, volunteers put together rape crisis centers. At first, these centers were totally staffed and funded by volunteers and volunteer fund raising. The volunteers, with their own funds, established a 24 hour hotline, with an answering service, that rape victims could call and reach a rape counselor.
Counselors would accompany victims to the hospital, explain procedures, and explain the victim’s options. Counselors would help the victim on the long journey to feeling safe once again, and to feeling some remnant of control over their lives.
Members of the rape crisis centers created education programs, and worked with both police and hospitals to establish procedures working with rape victims. Police were counselled on how to work with the traumatized victims, and police worked with the crisis workers to create new, enforceable laws against the rapists. It was the beginning of the victim advocacy program that is now common in most western countries. Most law enforcement agencies now have paid staff to work with crime victims en route to criminal procedings against the “perp” and subsequent counselling. Victims can testify at parole hearings against probation.
Rape is an outrage – against the individual, and against the community. Rape is less about sex than about power and humiliation. Have you noticed when serial rapists are caught, they turn out to be pathetic losers? They carry a huge burden of inadequacy combined with feelings of entitlement. The most appropriate penalty is their exposure through the court systems, and imprisonment, with those who, like themselves, think like predators.
But we must do what we can do to help the victims, to provide them with counselling and resources to speed their recovery. To create strong laws which protect the community by keeping the predators off the streets. To create procedures where evidence can be gathered and stored, and DNA samples compared so that offenders can be charged, and tried, and convicted.
Hats off, by the way, to the young man Coolfreak with the courage to first blog about this outrage. I find his blog brave and creative and refreshing and amusing and stimulating. Check it out.
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Thank you for posting about this important and much neglected issue.
I was raped when I was 14 in Kuwait, I never told anyone, because I knew that I’d be blamed for it (mainly because I knew the 2 guys who raped me).
There was no one I could talk too, I couldn’t tell the police, and 10 yrs on, I still haven’t told my parents, and do not plan too.
It was the thanks to my close friends that helped me get over my ordeal and build my life up.
I want to help others who have been thru what I have, and had no one to talk too, and sadly there is no rape crisis centres or numbers you can call… however, one day this will change.
Ananya, I am so sorry that happened to you.ur a very hard gal with ful of guts.
Jewaira – thanks. But actually, after I posted I remembered there was another one, written as fiction, about a young woman molested by her dad, so I was like third in a week. I think by Tantalize, a very difficult post, heartbreaking.
Ananya, I am so sorry that happened to you. It’s a huge burden to carry around, and I am so thankful you had good friends who you could trust, and who carried you through. You are a very courageous young woman.
Most victims I worked with were first and foremost thankful to be alive. Many rapists kill their victims. Second, though, they blamed themselves. Women have been taught to blame themselves. It is a sickness.
You did nothing wrong. You did not invite rape. People have choices, and people who choose to rape do it for their own self-absorbed reasons.
One day, I hope you will be able to be a part of the cure for this problem here in Kuwait. Hugs, dear one.
You’re so right, we need a hotline for both rape victims AND victims of domestic abuse because I dont think we have that either. I think the problem we face in Kuwait is that we don’t have many specialists in this feild. So actually getting a counselor to answer phone calls and tell people what to do may be difficult.
The other issue, which also makes it harder here than in the US, is that it is more scandelous for the woman. In the Arab world, a woman may actually prefer to let the criminal get away with raping her than admit that she was that exposed to a man even if it were by force. At least she would be able to spare herself the accusations that she consented to a premarrital affair. But I think that if more women knew that if you go the doctor right after the event and without having showered the Dr can tell if you were forced and may even detect samples for DNA identification and give you a birth control pill…well then the situation might be different.
People don’t talk about rape here. It’s just too sensitive.
the country is so closed up with so many rules thats its almost impossible to meet others. They end up being sick freaks who go around raping and as u said the stories are multiplying in the papers and this is all sickening! I posted recently about this pedophile running around kidnapping and raping kids but he was caught. You can read it here http://fonzation.com/blog/?p=245
Fonzy – In the Kuwait Times, it appears there has been more than one arrest, and they are still not sure they have caught the real child-rapist. I suspect there is more than one. Raping children . . .does it get any lower?
1001 – The Rape Crisis Line doesn’t have to be manned by “experts”, it can be staffed by volunteers who have gone through a training and have been vetted. One of the most important qualifications would be that the person have a huge respect for confidentiality.
Second, here in Kuwait, we would also need male volunteers. If you think it is unthinkable for a woman who has been raped – you can’t imagine what it is like for a young boy or man, because it strips them of their feelings of manliness. The Rape Crisis Line in Kuwait would also need Philipina volunteers, and Indonesian, and Indian, and western . . . it would need a good stable of volunteers.
It can be done. The first step is to start talking about it.
lower than kids….. no… thats why those rapists when caught should be castrated a 100 times, then skin their balls and stick em in salt water.
Studies on rapists show there is very little hope, ever, of a “cure.” To me, it is poetic justice to lock up up to prey on one another, rather than on the innocents. But we still need strong laws, compassionate police, and counselling and resources for the victims.
Rape is for sick sorry sods.