Blaming the victim
While I was as far away from a computer as I could, the Daily Nation published an article I wrote about how rape is about the only crime where the victim is blamed perhaps more than the perpetrator. It was published on the 6th April and was a DN2 cover story.
I was prompted to write this story after reading about the rape victim of a Kenyan MP whose story appeared in the front pages of all leading papers in Kenya and follow-up stories that evoked comments suggesting that the woman was to blame in some way or another for what happened to her.
http://mobile.nation.co.ke/news/Woman-alleges-rape-in-MPs-private-office/-/1950946/2662506/-/format/xhtml/-/11o7hj4/-/index.html
https://www.facebook.com/DailyNation/photos/a.119442844496.90243.105983259496/10153260927539497/
A female member of parliament also gave her bit of advice …
She later retracted and said she was not blaming women for rape – perhaps she was misquoted….
I looked at the Kenya national bureau of statistics crime data from 2007-2012 and made this simple graph…
Whereas the rate of reporting of defilement has gone up since Njoki Ndungu’s sexual offense bill, the rate of reporting for rape has not. I believe it is because women know they will too often be blamed for ‘allowing’ themselves to get raped – although young girls are also blamed if they are raped, as I wrote in my article, it is even worse for grown women.
