Education: The key to ending Rape.

Rape is a crime that India is overly familiar with. These cases have become so common that we often see ourselves overlooking them, forgetting the heinous nature of the crime. The reason for this is the unavoidable numbness is caused by the high frequency of such cases. When we hear about a heinous crime, most of us go into state of shock, hearing about such cases for the first time impacts us more heavily but when we repeatedly hear about such cases, this feeling of shock no longer stays within us as our brain adapts to such cases. Eventually, it comes to the point where we overlook the horrifying nature of rape as a crime, and title such cases as “normal” or “usual”. This normalisation is extremely dangerous because we as a society, to some extent, stop caring. When a crime no longer heavily emotionally impacts us, we don’t feel a heavy need to do something, to act and stand up. We no longer care until and unless a rare, sadistic crime of the same type comes along, a crime like the Nirbhaya case. The more gruesome the crime, the higher impact it has on us as people. It wakes us up, yet for most of us, this wake up call only lasts a few days at most, until we find another cause to focus on. But what is the true cause of such cases? Why exactly does rape happen and how can we as a society prevent it? The main reasons for why rape happens is the extensive gap between rich and poor, the police perception on rape and sometimes, police misconduct and the societal outlook on rape victims, all of which stem back to our overall mindset as a society.

In such frightening crimes, the focus is rightfully on the victim, most sympathise with the victim and view the rapist as an animal, we dehumanise them. Though, when it comes to exploring the reason for rape, the focus once again goes towards the victim. We seem to forget about the rapist altogether and no longer think of them as a person and so them committing such a crime seems predictable and almost obvious, ye toh hona hi tha. This is when we begin to blame the victim; be it their clothes, the time or place, it’s their fault. Victim-blaming is nothing but people overlooking the true, deep-rooted problem within society that causes rape. Blaming the victim is an easy answer, it allows them to continue without having to make any lifestyle changes to properly prevent such crimes. Instead of blaming the victim, we should shift the focus back at the rapist. They are the committers of the crime therefore, the problem lies within, or near them. This would be the first, most basic step towards change; rightfully distributing accountability and accepting the fact that the rapist is to be blamed, not the victim.

The next step is to analyse the rapist and to find potential reasons for their actions. Studies have shown a direct correlation between socio-economic status and crime rates, with a lower socio-economic status, the likelihood of committing a crime increases. This can be drawn back to lack of education. People coming from a lower class have a lower education standard with some being forced out of school to help fend for their families. The ones lucky enough to complete their schooling education end up graduating from schools with no sex education due to the taboo and stigmatisation of the topic, especially in lower class areas. This results in students turning to Porn as the principal learning source of sex. Porn is known for setting unrealistic expectations for sex. Several studies have proven that males who watch violent pornography have the tendency to act more hostile towards women, showing an indirect correlation between pornography and rape. When men indulge in unhealthy amounts of pornography, they face an eventual numbness within them, and the content no longer impacts them. Similar to the type of numbness we feel after being exposed to different cases of the same type of crime. They need more. This results in rapists indulging in violent sexual crimes just to get what they want. Surprisingly, most rapists don’t even consider what they’re doing wrong. Due to fact that most of their education comes from the people around them and the internet, their understandings of right and wrong become distorted and they no longer understand the topic of consent. This would also mean that with a growing gap between rich and poor, the amount of rape cases and the overall rate of crime would increase as the limited rich population would get richer, while the poor population would maximise and only get poorer. This is why education is vital, it addresses sexual assault cases and also destigmatises the idea of sex. This is important as we cannot expect and action upon rape cases if people are still afraid of bringing up the idea of sex.

Another reason for why rape cases happen is due to the low police engagement in such cases. A lot of police cops themselves have a mindset which makes their first reaction to blame the victim rather than act on the actual case, this is due to the lack of education. This police perception of rape cases results in several victims being afraid of reporting such crimes and instead, blaming themselves for the crime. If the level of standard education increases and this is enforced, we would have a higher educated population and eventually a new generation of police authorities who don’t have a victim-blaming mindset, making victims more comfortable to come forward.

As well as that, due to the sensitive nature of the crime, rapists have a higher fear of losing respect within society. Rapists coming from high societies and high social backgrounds tend to get away with such crimes through bribery to escape public defamation. A way to approach this issue is to pay police officers a higher salary. Denmark is known for having a low corruption rate, the average pay in Denmark for police officers is 23,600 DKK, which is 2,80,452.72 Indian Rupee while in India, the average pay for police officers is around 1.5 Lakhs. With higher pay for police officers, there would be less cops taking bribes. With less cops taking bribes, more rape cases would be better investigated and rape would be taken overall, more seriously as a crime in terms of investigation.

To conclude, rape is an issue. That has been established. But in order to tackle this issue, we must understand the several different factors impacting the reduction of case reports and the reason for why rape cases are not properly investigated; these factors include the low salaries for police officers, the societal mindset of victim-blaming and the low sex education rates. Our first step is holding the right people accountable and looking straight towards the deep rooted issue of the lack of education. Once we are able to move past this education barrier and reduce the overall gap between rich and poor, we will be able to see reduced rape rates and crime rates. At the end of the day, this journey is one that we must all take part in, one that will take time and would require a complete system and mindset shift. Nevertheless, it is clear that our India has improved as we can see significant change in terms of the societal mindset on rape and sexual assault cases. Though, with open minds, we look forward to the future for more and more positive changes, systematic and mindset related, to allow the reduction of such gruesome crimes. Jai hind.