Women Raping Women in Zimbabwe On The Rise

CASES of women raping other women are on the increase in Zimbabwe, a report by Female Rise reveals.

Female Rise is a non-governmental organisation that fights for the advancement and empowerment of women. The organisation aims to reduce violence against women.

The Female Rise report is a follow-up to a Harvard University survey  which was done in 2010 by Harvard academic Lynn Lawry and a team of researchers. They  conducted a research of human-rights abuses in over 200 households in Zimbabwe and found that young girls between the ages 13-18 had been victims of sexual abuse.

Lawry’s study asked victims of sexual violence to specify their assailant’s gender.

It found that 25 percent of the women and 10 percent of the men subjected to sexual violence were assaulted by a woman.

The Female Rise report also said that the judiciary in Zimbabwe was helpless and did not deal with such cases effectively as the law does not have a clause that declares that a woman is capable of raping another female.

The victims are also left to deal with the traumatic experience alone as they do not have access to counselling and help that is offered to victims of rape who are raped by men.

The Female Rise account observed that the police were not accommodating where the issue was concerned.

Most victims also do not report that they were raped because they fear that no one would believe them. The victims said the police ridiculed them and dismissed them as mad.

“The police refuse to comment on such issues fearing the bad light this revelation will bring upon the country. Rape on its own is viewed as an embarrassment in Zimbabwe and woman-on-woman rape will be an even worse evil to own up to,” the report says.

Chief police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba said police did not ridicule victims of sexual violence let alone any victim.

“Our job as police is to protect victims and to arrest criminals. Women who sexually abuse other women have committed a crime and if a report is made we will follow it through. We will arrest the suspect and carry out investigations. No one should be laughed at or dismissed and I don’t think there are victims that were not assisted by the police,” she said.

The report went on to reveal that most of the victims of female rape were sexually assaulted by women who are rape victims lashing out in frustration that the judiciary failed to successfully prosecute their assailants.

Some believe these sexual assaults are perpetrated on members of the public by frustrated homosexual women afraid to embrace their sexual orientation due to societal discrimination.

“Due to the judiciary system in Zimbabwe, most rape victims do not get the verdict they hope for. Usually, the victims do not get access to the court mandated counselling, as a result, they do not know how to cope with their situations and often resort to patronising unaffected people in their societies,” the report says.

Ms Tariro Thandi, the deputy executive director of Musasa, a non-governmental organisation (formerly Musasa Project) that fights for women’s rights, said her organisation was yet to handle cases of women raping other women.

“Unfortunately, we have not assisted women who have been violated by other women but if they are there we are here to assist them. We will help them because we assisted all women who are victims of violence. But I must admit that we have not heard of such cases, we usually assist women who have been raped by men,” she said.

A lawyer , Mr Thomas Sibanda, said the law of Zimbabwe classifies women-on-women rape as indecent assault.

“When a woman rapes another woman it’s not considered rape in Zimbabwe but indecent assault. According to the law we have only men are capable of rape. It is necessary for us to amend the laws of rape if we are to ever prosecute women for rape, if we don’t they will continue roaming the streets raping more women.

“We should classify the sexual violation of women by other women as rape when that victim has been physically overpowered and sexual acts are performed on her without her consent. In a nutshell we should say that sex, regardless of gender, is rape if it is done without the will of the other. Whether there is physical harm or not is besides the point,” said Mr Sibanda.

Dr Abel Ndlovu, a sociologist, said female on female rape is more widespread in conflict zones but admitted that it was by all likelihoods occurring in Zimbabwe.

“Usually this type of rape happens in war zones and it’s perpetrated by female soldiers. Most of the perpetrators do it to hurt their victims, there are cases where knives, guns and sticks have been shoved into the women’s vaginas. In most cases the purpose of the rape is not for sexual release, the intentions are to inflict as much pain and harm as possible. The victims are often left with permanent physical and psychological scars,” said Dr Ndlovu.

Women have committed rape in conflicts, including during the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda’s former Minister for Family and Women Affairs, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, is the first and only woman convicted by an international tribunal for being party to rape. Up to half a million women were raped during the Rwandan genocide, according to the UN, and Nyiramasuhuko ordered women and girls to be raped. Women reportedly committed acts of sexual violence during conflicts in Liberia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka.

Posted by Editor on December 31, 2013. Filed under AFRICA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry