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Rise in dismissed rape and defilement cases warrants revision of laws

Friday July 26 2019
edito
By RWANDA TODAY

Every year, thousands of defilement and rape suspects in the country go scot-free due to lack of scientific evidence to pin them to the crimes, and this should make us as a society very uncomfortable.

A total of 1,100 child defilement cases out of 3,000 received in 2018 were dismissed because the victims failed to produce scientific evidence against their attackers, and for a number of years now, many similar cases have been dismissed every year.

These numbers betray the underbelly in the country's lawmaking process, which is grossly out of touch with the realities in the society at large.

The nature of rape and child defilement as crimes perpetrated by those who exert power and dominance over their victims and the common circumstances under which these crimes are committed, takes away any chance of the victim collecting or preserving any useful scientific evidence against the perpetrator.

The psychological distress, trauma, fear, selfblame and the sense of disgust that rape and child defilement endure sees the victims unable to be of the frame of mind to collect and preserve evidence.

Precedent set

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Just like it happened with the infanticide law, where the activists strongly advocated for a revision of the law, which previously ignored the mental health state of the women who committed the crime, laws against rape need to be revisited if justice is to be truly served to the victims.

Laws that punish rape, particularly in their nature, lean towards cushioning the offender, in the sense that they ask too much from the victim.

With the exclusion of circumstantial evidence the burden becomes too great for the victim to scientifically prove not only that they were raped, but that they were raped by the perpetrator.

The fact that rape and defilement perpetrators are aware of loopholes in the laws also plays in their favour to cover their bases and eliminates any incriminating evidence. It also makes it hard for the victim to prove their crimes and all these things should be looked into.

The legislature and judiciary arms of government shouldn't just look on as rape and defilement cases get dismissed in their thousands every year.

In the meantime, the relevant institutions need to mount vigorous sensitisation campaigns about the importance of preserving evidence that can help convict rape and defilement perpetrators.

More must be done in the way of investments in training investigators and health workers across the country to efficiently collect and preserve evidence from a rape crime scene.