I normally do not like writing about scandals and wrong doings but today I feel compelled to give my two penny bit for whatever it is worth as two troubling occurrences are hogging the headlines. The first one is the judgement on the double murder of a child and a servant in 2005 and the other is of the sexual assault of a young journalist by her boss. Both are very troubling in more ways than one. In the first case the killing of a young spirited teenager by her own parents seems difficult to accept. more so if the motive is her relationship with a servant old enough to be her father. Somehow the whole trial seems botched and the idea that two parents, who may be innocent, can be accused of the crime is somewhat preposterous. But this is India my darlings and everything is possible in the name of misplaced morality and righteousness. I am not privy to what occurred in the case of the teenager, but I can tell you first hand how a 12 year old was accused of having loose moral character in order to whitewash an elder who molested her. I just hope that today’s judgement is fair to the parents as I would not like to begin to imagine how a mother and a father would feel if they had to live with the accusation of killing their only child if that were not true. And if that was the case then the murderers roams free. What is also perturbing is that this case was given great importance by the media who had a field day and great TRPs. It was as if the whole country was sitting in judgement. As the same child whom I mentioned earlier said: Only God, the victim and the perpetrator know the truth, everything else is suspect.
The other case is as disquieting. A case of sexual assault by a employer has become everybody’s business. It almost seems as if no one is truly concerned about what the victim wants. In the case of perpetrator known to the victim, the later may not want to send the person to prison at all. However in this case the everyone wants to play judge and pronounce the sentence. The fact that the letter in which the victim describes almost graphically what occurred is now on the net reeks of voyeurism and makes me sick.
Abuse is something you have to live on for your entire life. It remains with you however hard you try to wish it away. It lurks in the recesses of your mind and a small trigger is all it needs to open the flood gates. I do not know if a victim really wants the whole world to take the cudgels on her behalf, more so when one knows that for many it is just a way of forwarding wily agendas. The first thing is to ask what the victim wants and respect her wishes.
Is anyone listening!
