July 15, 2011
Trigger warning: talk of rape and violence against women
I watched an episode of Law and Order: SVU last night that dealt with some really tough issues. Actually I was working and went out to the lounge for a smoke break and ended up watching the last 15 minutes because I couldn’t look away.
The story was of a young lady who was raped by a knife wielding bandit. The story went that a lady had come across the scene and fought off the attacker and then slipped away into the world to hide. She was an illegal immigrant who had come to the US from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As the story went on, she went on to talk about how rape is used as a weapon of war. The character was raped by soldiers and watched her five year old daughter be raped as well. She watched her daughter take six days to die from her injuries and was cast out by her husband because of the shame she now brought onto him.
She then went to a refugee camp, and was eventually beaten, raped repeatedly and forced into marriage by one of the sides in the conflict. She finally escaped to America as an illegal immigrant.
During the rest of the show she testified to the grand jury, and in one scene talked about what happened to her and how she could identify the act of rape so readily. She was then locked up by immigration, released thanks to the help of the Assistant District Attorney and then testified to see the attacker locked up. She was so overjoyed that she was responsible for seeing a rapist locked up.
At the end of the show she was offered residency but decided to go back to the Congo and take the fight up against the rape and attacks on women. The Assistant District Attorney ended up taking leave to work at the UN to look into victims of gender-based war crimes.
I realise that it is just a TV show, yet I know that there is some basis for the story. The character’s story might not be that of one person, but the stories of many people melded together. The fact that rape is used as a weapon of war is not disputed and I’m sure there are stories far worse than that presented in this fictional TV show that do not get heard about.
What shocked me is that when the leading female characters were talking through the awful things that had happened to this woman, it was mentioned that rape and gender-based war crimes were not an acceptable reason to apply for asylum. This seems disgraceful. A quick Google search seems to tell me that this situation is still not clear and that it can often be a case by case thing.
I’m really thankful that this was presented in such a format. I mean, I was aware that rape is an issue when civil war and unrest occurs. But to have this graphic account of the horror that this character had gone through placed in front of me just made me angry and upset. I was angry because I knew that this story, although fiction was believable and that many women are out there who are being tortured and wounded through gender-based war crimes. It made me upset that it was a fictional program that brought it into the lounge rooms of millions of people.
I would have expected to have heard more about this sort of thing in the news, or in documentaries. Perhaps I don’t watch the right things. It just seems abhorrent that there are people out there being denied help and asylum because the system doesn’t recognise these crimes as being worthy of it.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t have the ability to go there and stop these things. I can talk about them. I can be one voice in the crowd. The crowd which can grow stronger and louder only if we talk about these things.
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Law and Order: SVU taught me something last night…
Trigger warning: talk of rape and violence against women
I watched an episode of Law and Order: SVU last night that dealt with some really tough issues. Actually I was working and went out to the lounge for a smoke break and ended up watching the last 15 minutes because I couldn’t look away.
The story was of a young lady who was raped by a knife wielding bandit. The story went that a lady had come across the scene and fought off the attacker and then slipped away into the world to hide. She was an illegal immigrant who had come to the US from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As the story went on, she went on to talk about how rape is used as a weapon of war. The character was raped by soldiers and watched her five year old daughter be raped as well. She watched her daughter take six days to die from her injuries and was cast out by her husband because of the shame she now brought onto him.
She then went to a refugee camp, and was eventually beaten, raped repeatedly and forced into marriage by one of the sides in the conflict. She finally escaped to America as an illegal immigrant.
During the rest of the show she testified to the grand jury, and in one scene talked about what happened to her and how she could identify the act of rape so readily. She was then locked up by immigration, released thanks to the help of the Assistant District Attorney and then testified to see the attacker locked up. She was so overjoyed that she was responsible for seeing a rapist locked up.
At the end of the show she was offered residency but decided to go back to the Congo and take the fight up against the rape and attacks on women. The Assistant District Attorney ended up taking leave to work at the UN to look into victims of gender-based war crimes.
I realise that it is just a TV show, yet I know that there is some basis for the story. The character’s story might not be that of one person, but the stories of many people melded together. The fact that rape is used as a weapon of war is not disputed and I’m sure there are stories far worse than that presented in this fictional TV show that do not get heard about.
What shocked me is that when the leading female characters were talking through the awful things that had happened to this woman, it was mentioned that rape and gender-based war crimes were not an acceptable reason to apply for asylum. This seems disgraceful. A quick Google search seems to tell me that this situation is still not clear and that it can often be a case by case thing.
I’m really thankful that this was presented in such a format. I mean, I was aware that rape is an issue when civil war and unrest occurs. But to have this graphic account of the horror that this character had gone through placed in front of me just made me angry and upset. I was angry because I knew that this story, although fiction was believable and that many women are out there who are being tortured and wounded through gender-based war crimes. It made me upset that it was a fictional program that brought it into the lounge rooms of millions of people.
I would have expected to have heard more about this sort of thing in the news, or in documentaries. Perhaps I don’t watch the right things. It just seems abhorrent that there are people out there being denied help and asylum because the system doesn’t recognise these crimes as being worthy of it.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t have the ability to go there and stop these things. I can talk about them. I can be one voice in the crowd. The crowd which can grow stronger and louder only if we talk about these things.