Will a Horrific Bus Gang-Rape in Delhi Finally Change India's Culture of Rape?

[Phillip V]

The death of a young woman who was raped by several men has shattered the dreams of her father.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/asia/for-india-rape-victims-family-layers-of-loss.html

His daughter, 23, who died after being gang-raped and attacked with a metal rod on a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16, has become a symbol of all that is wrong with how India treats its women and girls. But until December, she had been an example of something very different: of how far ambition, hard work and parental love can remove one generation from the rural poverty that is the lot of most of India's 1.2 billion people.
...
"At the village we could not fulfill our needs, so it was inevitable to move out," Mr. Singh said about the decision to leave three decades ago...  Mr. Singh's first salary in the city was about $4 a month, but he soon saved enough to have his wife, Asha, join him the city, and then to buy land and build a small home. While girls are not always prized in India, Mr. Singh and his wife lavished attention on their firstborn, a daughter, he recalled. "Whether it's a girl or a boy, it's God's gift," he said.

The daughter — whose name is being withheld because it is illegal to name a rape victim in India without permission from the victim or her next of kin — showed as a very young girl a love for school, her father remembered. "She used to cry if she couldn't go to school," he said.
...
Together, they discussed how she might advance further than even their most accomplished relative, a judge. She wished to become a doctor, but because money was tight, she chose physiotherapy and enrolled in a school in Dehra Dun, a major city in the north.

To pay for school, Mr. Singh sold most of the land he owned in Medawara Kalan, borrowed money from family members and worked double shifts, 16 hours a day, loading luggage at the New Delhi airport.

[Syt]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/13/india-rape-death-penalty/1829925/

6 arrested in new gang rape of a bus passenger in India

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police said they arrested six men on Saturday in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India, four weeks after a deadly attack on a student on a moving bus in the capital outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws.

Police officer Raj Jeet Singh said a 29-year-old woman was traveling by bus to her village in northern Punjab state on Friday night and was the only passenger. He said the driver and conductor are accused of driving her to a desolate location and then taking her to a nearby building, where they were joined by five friends in raping her repeatedly throughout the night.

The driver dropped the woman off at her village early Saturday, he said.

Singh said police arrested six suspects on Saturday and were searching for another.

The brutal rape of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus in December set off an impassioned debate about what India needs to do to prevent such tragedies. Protesters and politicians have called for tougher rape laws, major police reforms and a transformation in the way the country treats women.

In her first published comments Sunday, the mother of the deceased student said all six suspects in that case, including one believed to be a juvenile, deserve to die.

She was quoted by The Times of India newspaper as saying that the youngest suspect participated in the most brutal aspects of the rape.

Five men have been charged with the student's rape and murder and face a possible death penalty if convicted. The sixth suspect, who says he is 17 years old, is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor. His maximum sentence would be three years in a reform facility.

"Now the only thing that will satisfy us is to see them punished. For what they did to her, they deserve to die," the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Some activists have demanded a change in Indian laws so that juveniles committing heinous crimes can face the death penalty.

The names of the victim of the Dec. 16 attack and her family have not been released.

The physiotherapy student died from massive internal injuries in a Singapore hospital where she was sent for emergency treatment.

[merithyn]

Yeah, you guys were right. Nothing's going to change over there.

[frunk]

It might change, but it won't change quickly and it won't change everywhere at the same speed.  The central government isn't at all strong enough to enforce these types of reforms on the local regions, and some of those regions are hyper-resistant to any change.

[Phillip V]

'India's president approved an ordinance strengthening sexual-assault laws Sunday, with death as the maximum punishment in cases of rape.

"This [ordinance] will come into effect immediately," a spokesman at India's home ministry said. The law will need to be ratified by Parliament within six weeks of the start of its next session, which opens Feb. 21. Under current law, rapists can face sentences ranging from seven years to life imprisonment.
...
The government accepted the suggestion that rape should be made gender neutral but didn't accept a proposal to remove an exception for marital rape, a senior minister said Saturday.

In India, husbands can't be punished for raping their wives. The minister didn't say why the suggestion was rejected.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323807004578281733711792640.html

[Phillip V]

Rampant Child Sex Abuse in India

'Sexual abuse of children is "disturbingly common" in India, and the government's response to it has fallen short, both in protecting children and in treating victims...

"Children are sexually abused by relatives at home, by people in their neighborhoods, at school and in residential facilities for orphans and other at-risk children," said the 82-page report, titled "Breaking the Silence: Child Sexual Abuse in India."

Yet most cases go unreported. A 2007 government-sponsored study, based on interviews with 12,500 children in 13 Indian states, said that 53 percent of the children reported having been sexually abused in some way, but only 3 percent of the cases were reported to the police.

"Children who bravely complain of sexual abuse are often dismissed or ignored by the police, medical staff and other authorities," Meenakshi Ganguly, the director of Human Rights Watch in South Asia, said in a statement.
...
In interviews with more than 100 people, Human Rights Watch found that the police, government officials and doctors were unprepared to deal with child sexual abuse cases and often made the situation worse by not believing the children's accounts and subjecting them to humiliating medical examinations.

The rights group reported that in four cases, doctors used an unscientific "finger test" to examine girls who had been raped.

"The process is so traumatic that in some cases the children are better off not reporting" abuse, Ms. Ganguly said in an interview.

Sexual abuse of children happens everywhere, Ms. Ganguly said, but in India the official response to it seriously compounds the problem. In one episode, a 12-year-old girl who reported to the police that she had been raped by a man from a politically connected family was locked in jail for almost two weeks, the report found. The police insisted that she change her story, it said.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/world/asia/report-faults-indian-government-over-widespread-child-sex-abuse.html

[Ideologue]

is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor

Ah, are they gonna count his rings?

[Eddie Teach]

So how's that culture change comin' along?

[Syt]

is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor

Ah, are they gonna count his rings?

Kinda - I think you can do this through bone analysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_age

[Phillip V]

Swiss Tourist Gang Raped in Central India

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/swiss-tourist-gang-raped-in-central-india/

[CountDeMoney]

But they're not Indian, so it doesn't matter.

[Neil]

This is what Meri wanted when she supported the independence of India.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think Meri's that old.

[dps]

I don't think Meri's that old.

If she hasn't demanded the restoration of British rule, then she has supported Indian independence.

[MadImmortalMan]

Good grief.

British tourist jumps out of hotel room in India, fearing sexual attack

Published March 19, 2013

Associated Press



NEW DELHI –  A British woman traveling in India jumped out of the third-floor window of her hotel room on Tuesday, telling police she feared a sexual attack after the hotel's owner tried to force his way into the room by offering her a massage.

The woman was not badly hurt, although she suffered some injuries to her legs, police officer Sushant Gaur said.

Police arrested the hotel owner in connection with the incident in Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal, one of India's most cherished tourist attractions, Gaur said. No charges have been filed.

The woman told the police that the hotel owner kept knocking on her door persistently and even tried to unlock the door after she refused his offer of a free massage.

The owner denied that and police said he told them he knocked on the woman's door only because she had asked to be woken up at 4 a.m.

"Our consular team has spoken to this lady and also to the local police," a spokesman for the British High Commission in New Delhi said, adding the high commission, or embassy, was offering her consular assistance.

The incident comes after a Swiss tourist was gang-raped on Friday in central India. Six men have been arrested in that attack.

The violence comes amid heightened concern about sexual assaults in India that followed the fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi in December.

That rape sparked public protests demanding the government do a better job of protecting women.

In response, the government passed a law increasing prison terms for rape and providing for the death penalty in cases of rape that result in death or leave the victim in a coma. It has also made voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women punishable under criminal law.