Good Girls Don’t Get Raped
As a student at Imo State University in the 80s I used to hear stories of retributive gang rapes of uppity female students. Somehow they always happened to other girls on other campuses. I listened in wide eyed dis-belief.
It was like a morality lesson for young women: rape was punishment for bad behavior, ‘only bad girls get raped’. If you got raped you must have been ‘bad’. It was the boogey man that ‘kept us in line’ and working real hard at appearing to be ’good girls’.
We weren’t of course. We went to parties, drank alcohol, had premarital sex and wore sexy clothes. I wonder how many of us didn’t resist or report a rape because we thought we deserved it. Some how. And then eventually convinced ourselves that it wasn’t really rape, that we ‘consented’.
You know you didn’t want to, you said you didn’t want to but he just ignored your protests and went ahead anyway. You’ve known him for awhile, maybe you were even thinking of ‘going’ with him. Maybe this was your first date with him. Maybe everyone says he’s great. Just that you weren’t ready.
How many of us went on to date the guy? I read online one girl is engaged to her rapist. I don’t agree with her choice but I do in some crazy way I think I know how she justified it. One of those things you hear. ‘We’ve done it already, we might as well do it again’.
Almost 20 years later a woman reported a rape at the FIDA branch where I was a member . She was a practicing medical doctor in her early thirties. I noticed she dressed conservatively because I don’t. Dress conservatively that is.
She described how she had gone on a date with a man who took her to his house, drugged her and with his flatmate spent the night raping her. The police did nothing. She came to FIDA for help. They asked ‘what was she doing there in the first place drinking alcohol?’ and dismissed her.
If you get that attitude from a bunch of female lawyers what can you expect from the police? Its really not surprising to hear the Assistant Commissioner of Police in Abia State Mr. Micloth say the young woman we watched getting raped on the internet either ‘deserved’ it or ‘consented’. Outrageous yes, but not surprising.
Good girls don’t get raped.
