Sexual Terrorism
We
have been silenced by Shame and Fear. By far the most pervasive form of terrorism is sexual in nature. The numbers are truly shocking and the price in terms of quality of human consciousness and the suffering, torment and agony paid by hundreds of millions of people almost infinite. The materials for this chapter comes from volume three of World Psychology, The Heart of Sex, (Between Heaven and Hell) and it is sad that much of the hell on earth is created through our sexualities. As surely as the Islamic Bin Laden terrorists were able to slam themselves into the trade towers, it is equally possible to slam oneself into a woman or child’s life sexually, causing wreck and havoc and a life time worth of pain. The problem with this form of terrorism is that we do not need any planes or bombs. The other problem is that there are way too many terrorists active in this area, even priests of the Catholic Church, who have been protected by their superiors; thus in reality that institution has been sanctioning continued sexual terrorism and the abuse of human consciousness. That is nothing new for the church; it has stood for hurt and abuse, terror and torture and war for at least fifteen hundred years. The universe of sexual terrorism is large and embraces many interlocking subjects. Though few, in terms of percentages, are actually killed through this form of terrorism it does not take much of a stretch of our imaginations to see that more women are probably murdered after being raped than civilians killed through more traditional forms of terrorism. President Bush’s war on terrorism misses the boat completely here; it does not even begin to address the real terrorism of human beings on this planet. In fact in this and the next chapter we shall see how even he believes and acts like a terrorist to the children of his own country through sexual educational policies that terrorize the nations young. The extent of the problem with sexuality and how much terror and human agony is present is introduced here first by U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis who said that 1 million children around the globe are annually forced into the sex trade. "The world has an incomprehensible willingness to sacrifice children. I can't imagine a more ugly pattern on the face of the earth. I don't know what's gone wrong with this world." According to Lewis, the Internet, sex tourism and globalization are all responsible for the recent phenomenon's growth in the sex slave trade. Reuters ran a piece saying child sex abuse by aid workers constitutes "A global problem of enormous magnitude. The sexual exploitation of displaced children by humanitarian workers constitutes intolerable abuse of power, violation of the rights of individual children, misuse of humanitarian assistance and violation of the fundamental duty of humanitarian workers to assist refugee and displaced populations, especially children." Confirming the negative direction of the trends we are hearing in this regard comes recent reports that there is a growing and alarming phenomenon in many cities in America, and probably around the world: prostitutes on the streets are getting younger and younger, some as young as 11. Rhonnie Jaus, chief of the sex crimes bureau at the Brooklyn district attorney's office said, “I have many cases involving teenage prostitutes and their pimps, with many more coming down the pike. We see girls as young as 12 and 13 being recruited to become prostitutes off our streets, in front of group homes, and even on their way to school." For anyone not understanding the nature of human vulnerability and how one person can hurt and cause great suffering in another, rape and child sexual abuse, which do violence not only to a person’s sexuality, but to their entire being, demonstrates truly the hurt humans are capable of feelings and dishing out to others without remorse. Rape envelops the whole world of its victims; it turns their world into living hells. And children who have been abused sexually live a life of strange shadows. There are no words strong enough to describe the way rape victims feel. They are locked in a nightmare that seems to have little relevance to the outside world. Having had their bodies violated and their minds tortured it is almost impossible to communicate the feelings to others who have no real perception of the depth of physical and psychological abuse a person can suffer through. We are incredibly vulnerable with our sexualities because they involve every level of our being. And yet that is not appreciated because vulnerability is not understood or cherished in modern society. Attacking a person through their sexuality gives a person access to the unspeakable. It gives them access to the absolute center of a person’s vulnerability. Every
time I close my eyes the nightmares come, Rape happens and it happens frequently. It is one of the least reported crimes within the UK and the USA. In the States alone every hour 78 woman are raped. That’s 1,872 per day, 13,000 a week, 52,000 a month, 629,000 a year. (National Center and Crime Victims research and Treatment Center, Rape In America, National Women’s Study, 1992) There is no way to calculate on a worldwide basis what the numbers actually are especially because only a small percentage of rape victims report the crime. Some estimate that only 16% (National Women’s Study) of all rapes are ever reported to the police. One police survey showed that although 90% of women who had never experienced a sexual attack, when surveyed believed they would report the crime, in reality only about 6% of women, who had actually been raped, made formal allegations. It is estimated that 102,096 forcible rapes, 39.2 per 100,000 population, ‘were known’ to the police in the United States in 1994 according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. In 2001, there were 249,000 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics. If we conservatively estimate that there are about 500,000 rapes a year in the States with a population of approximately 270 million, and the population of the earth is twenty times that we could conservatively estimate around 10 million rapes a year in the world. If we include child sexual abuse and sibling abuse and date rape these numbers sore up into the stratosphere. To estimate that twenty five million souls a year worldwide are ripped apart through our collective sexual ugliness would not be a far stretch of the imagination. Even Hitler, Stalin and Mao together could not compete with such numbers on a yearly basis. To even begin to approach the reality of human suffering and the actual quality or state of humanity we need to look at the fact that a staggering 83% of rape victims knew their attackers, and almost half of all rapes happened in the victim's home. The vast majority of alleged victims are under 30 with a fairly high proportion of those aged under 16. If we combine incest and child abuse, which are not defined as rape but fall under their own branches of sexual violence, the age median drops definitively. Sexual
violence is such a common aspect of human behavior "Even if you want to be negative, you can't be that negative. You can't willy-nilly place before our people statistics that will demoralize them and introduce suspicion among families," said Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula from South Africa, who rebelled against the idea that 1 in three young girls have been sexually assaulted in his country. South Africa has the highest per capita rate of reported rape in the world (115.6 for every 100,000 of the population in 1998). There part of the argument centers around whether the actual figure is 20 or 30 times higher than the reported figure. But the critical issue there, as elsewhere is the undeniably high incidence of domestic violence, and marital rape. According to Vogelman and Eagle (1991) violence in South Africa is present in 50% to 60% of marital relationships. This is likely to frequently involve rape as one of the components of violence within marriage. Women in violent intimate relationships are likely to be subjected to rape on an ongoing basis and over many years, and the fact is that most of these rapes are not reported. If there were 54,310 reported rapes, indecent assaults and incest cases in 1998, and only 1 in 20 is reported, then the actual figure is 1,086, 200, which is 2,976 rapes per day, or more than two a minute. That is the conservative estimate compared to the 1 in 36 claimed by the South African Police Services in 1997. In the end the issue of whether the real figures are 20 times higher or 35 times higher than the reported figures is irrelevant. The numbers are way to high. "The National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (In the US) was released in September 1996, following up on previous studies conducted in 1980 and 1986. The study found that child abuse and neglect were seriously worsening. Between 1986 and 1993 the number of cases doubled, going from 1.4 million to 2.8 million; and the number of cases involving serious injuries nearly quadrupled, rising from 143,000 to almost 570,000. The Department of Health and Human Services released a survey estimating that child abuse and neglect in the United States nearly doubled during the seven years between 1986 and 1993. The report estimated the number of abused and neglected children increased from 1.4 million in 1986, to over 2.8 million in 1993. The number of children who were seriously injured quadrupled from about 143,000 to nearly 570,000. It
is estimated by some that there are 60 million survivors What follows is an actual rape victims communication about their experiences. None of the above words can express what is expressed below. I was raped by someone I knew and trusted. Someone I let into my house as a friend. He then proceeded to rape me in a particularly cruel and brutal manner. Taking no heed of my struggling, my cries of "no, please, no". Not only did he rape me physically, he described in great detail a fantasy he was reliving. This was a very cruel distorted sick image. He had planned what he was going to do, he came prepared. After it was finished I lay like a new born baby, curled up half dressed in a fetal position in a state of disbelief and shock. I was shaking, trembling, scared and numb, totally numb. What had I done to make this happen? What had I said to make him behave this way? It must have been my fault, I must have given the wrong signals subconsciously. He knew my past. Maybe I did give out wrong signals. Maybe I am a slut, a tramp a whore like he said; maybe I was just getting what I deserved. I lay like that for a while in a state of total disbelief. Questioning myself, trying to make sense of it all. I felt dirty, disgusted, all I wanted to do was to strip my bed, strip my body, burn my clothes and bedding and scrub it all clean. It was like I was in some kind of nightmare. Trapped in a body and mind I had no control of, in a giant bubble. As day turned to night I was vaguely aware of a need to feel safe. My house no longer held the comfort and security it had once done. Some awful event had taken place there. It had been my sanctuary, a place I had chosen to move to with my children to escape such feelings of being unsafe, abused. I felt I was going crazy, trapped between reality and hell, not knowing what was real any more. Asking myself continuously "what did I do to make this happen to me?" I wanted to scream. A voice inside of my head was shouting and screaming. It was me. I was the one who was sobbing hysterically. I was the one who wanted to kill this man. I was the one who was wishing myself dead. My stomach was churning. I was seized with fear panic and horror. How could he do this to me? Why was he doing it? I thought I was going crazy. I wanted to run, to hide, to wake up and see that it was all some terrible mistake. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. What had I done that I deserved this? From Victim to Survivor There is a common saying that time is a great healer. Sometimes it is hard to believe that there will come a day when I won't relive at least once a day the morning I was raped. I look forward to the time when I don't shudder and cringe, as something happens to trigger off yet another painful memory. It is now 17 weeks since I was raped. Although I am a lot stronger than I was, I feel as though I will never again be the same person that I was before it happened. I will be older, wiser, less trusting, more aware, FlashbacksI can't remember what was said to trigger my first major flashback. One minute I was sitting quietly talking, the next I was transported to the middle of the actual rape. I was there reliving it second by second. It was so very real; I could feel what was happening, hear what was being said I was unaware of anyone or anything other than what I was being subjected to yet again. I could feel the panic, I couldn't breathe, I struggled, I wanted to escape but I didn't know how. I was going crazy. I wanted to shout and scream for help. I wanted someone to drag me out of this horrendous nightmare. I didn't want to be here It got to the stage that the flashbacks were becoming more and more intense. Sometimes I would scream, flinch, struggle, sob, cry, and shake violently, reacting the way I had no doubt reacted that morning. As they became more frequent I was starting to talk while I was having them, begging my attacker to stop and pleading for him not to hurt me, crying out in agony as he hurt me more, sobbing while he took no notice of my cries of "no please no more". I was vocalizing many of the things that I had shouted at him in my head whilst he was violating me, unable to at the time through sheer fear. I was releasing memories that I had pushed deep into my subconscious because of the pain and fear I knew I would experience when I eventually let them bubble back to the surface again. The time had to be right for me to face those fears and the reality that I had been raped. It's been a long slow painful struggle. The flashbacks don't frighten me as much as they did at first. I know I can escape from them, I know I won't be stuck there forever in limbo. Now they are gentler. I have relived the whole rape via flashbacks. The ones I have now are quieter. I can have a flashback and no one even realizes it. I am calmer, although still dazed and disorientated afterwards, not unlike waking up from a deep sleep where you were having a very lifelike dream. It is hard at first to tell reality from dream. Often I will cry, sometimes hard, sometimes gently. I have learnt not to suppress them any more but to let them come, and go with them instead of fighting them. They are a part of the healing process.
Home ]
|