OVER the years, there have been calls for the law to take a harsher stance on rapists. The tabled most popular are longer sentences and a minimum sentence of 30 years.
There has been a lot of talk about castration of the sexual organ of the male offender. Well hello Sharia law! Boko Haram and al-Shabaab are clamouring for you to take over Africa!
Let’s just retain the death penalty. Let’s chop off the long arms of thieves – and if they can steal and sprint, off with those heels as well!
Fornicators – let’s whip them good since we wouldn’t go as far as stoning them. Oh wait, judge Justice Ester Muremba has effectively banned canning. What on earth are we going to do with all those delinquent juveniles, the “spare the rod, spoil the child” movement?
A little bit of hands-on parenting that’s what! Nobody becomes a parent hoping that their child would become a criminal and yet rapists, thieves and murderers exist.
The thing is, when most parents hear that their “innocent” child was harassing another at the playground, they go into defensive mode to the other parent in order to pacify their little one.
Next thing, the child stabs a classmate in high school. Other parents will mete out revenge on a bully. Heard about the 41-year-old man who was found choking a Grade Six girl in a classroom last year? The man must have been enraged! Chop off those hands please.
We must teach our kids to report abusive actions of others to teachers and the school administration so that parents could be called in to discuss the problem.
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Catch the juveniles when they are young so that we can prevent repeat offenders. While we haven’t reached that level where talking to a child is the way to go, your child is your responsibility.
Rape is a problem and we all agree on that. However, no matter how much we try, hoping that a stricter legal system will solve the issue is a classic case of treating the symptom and not the cause.
We joke about it on social media, but sexual frustration is the actual problem.
Walk through any neighbourhood in the country and you will encounter used condoms recklessly discarded by midnight and moonlight lovers.
Kids know exactly what they are and what they are used for. Most parents are delusional to that! Again, that issue of not talking to a child.
Our age of consent that is pegged – right, “pegged” – at a high 16 is laughable because kids will be experimenting as Nigerian author Kechi Nomu writes: “girls you could tell were ‘doing it’,” in school.
Of course, I’ll go on and add that there will be boys they are doing with! So then where do rapists come from? Some won’t be “doing it”. Some won’t be having “enough of it”. Pressure, excuse the pun, then rape.
Legalise prostitution and let people have their sex. I promise you, men won’t need to lie to women just for sex or to lure young girls to rape. It’s that simple. Don’t even consider what the religious brigade has to say.
Want to know why prisons get closed in The Netherlands as there are no people to jail? The people are busy having sex! The minute you land in Amsterdam, you cannot escape the ample red light district in broad daylight.
It doesn’t matter what you think about when a child “should” have sex, the reality is that you can’t stop one. I analysed most rape cases last year especially ones that relate to 12 to 16-year-olds.
In half of the instances, the underage girl would likely have consented to sex and the girl’s parents push a case of rape. That is why ages of consent have been lowered in progressive countries.
Fortunately, the courts operate on a case by case and proof by proof basis. See why blanket sentences are not ideal?
That besides being the point, we send people to prison so that they could come out reformed. We stopped being barbaric, punitive societies a long time ago.
Yes, we don’t even punish criminals. We send them to prison because it is enforced rehab without the Paris Hilton treatment. Did I say prison? Modern societies now call them correctional services.
While pro-death penalty advocates are aplenty, we are hesitant to execute prisoners on death row – 97 currently – because the responsibility of taking a man out of his own body is unnatural.
We rarely give life sentences either, it is because we want the people we send in there to come out thoughtful and better citizens.
Sonny Jermain writes in his personal capacity. This piece is an excerpt from his book I Deserve to Be: Selfworth is a Silent Killer, that is due end of year.
