Sexual violence and technology: How to respond to rape

This week’s news from Kushtia includes a story of sexual assault involving an extortion racket aimed at the victims. The case includes the clear wrong-doing of many people. Yet it also partially answers the question of what we should do when rape/sexual assault occurs.

The story in short appears to be people in Kushtia have accused a schoolteacher, Helal Uddin Panna, of sexually abusing multiple women and girls and recording the assaults in photos and videos. Four men, including Helal, have been charged under the Pornographic Control Act, and activists have staged rallies demanding more police investigation. But a few others have attempted to extort money from victims’ families, apparently by threatening to distribute the videos of the assaults. This has reportedly caused one family to leave Kushtia, but the threat is rather empty: the videos are already for sale in local shops.

The story is lurid and disturbing. Sexual abuse from a schoolteacher is a violation of the trust of students, their families, and the whole community, and those who exploit victims through blackmail and profiteering are also clearly doing wrong.

Sadly, this situation is somewhat common. In America, a court case involving male teenagers in Steubenville, Ohio, who photographed and videotaped themselves raping a 16-year-old girl, garnered enormous public attention this past spring. (Two of the perpetrators, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, were sentenced to prison.) In Canada, an even sadder saga has played out: in 2011, teenagers videotaped themselves raping a teenage girl named Rehtaeh Parsons, who took her own life in 2013 after the perpetrators distributed the video over social media and Canadian police refused to pursue charges.

The human tendency towards confusion about rape has been on display in each place. Many have supported the victims and called for social change and better policing. But others have responded to victims’ humiliation by gawking at images of abuse. In the US, as in Bangladesh, some saw fit to denounce or put pressure on victimised females. In Canada, as in Bangladesh, the police response was insufficient.

These negative responses are destructive. The abuse is no way the fault of the victims, no matter where on Earth it occurs. It is the fault of the person who chooses to abuse them. Victims do not deserve exploitation, humiliation, or neglect.

Negative social responses can be a large part of what causes trauma for victims. Being sexually assaulted is awful. Being expected to bear more harm because you have been assaulted is a uniquely deadly source of stress. Victims of sexual violence who are subjected to victim-blaming have much higher rates of suicide than those who are treated with kindness.

But this also means that ordinary bystanders are powerful sources of non-violence when rape occurs – if they choose to be.

So what is the proper response to rape? What should people do to help victims and avoid harming them more?

The good news from Kushtia is that some of the right things are being done. Some people have sought to press charges, using the court system as a relatively orderly way to seek justice. While the court system is highly imperfect here and in North America, the action of pressing charges is sometimes meaningful to some victims and their families. (Efforts to make courts more compassionate towards victims and less sex-biased are also always useful.)

Second, rallies are a good thing. It is clear that human rights activists and members of the community care a great deal about the rights of these victims. That is a hopeful sign, and sustained pressure in favour of positive treatment for sexual assault survivors can yield results over the long term.

Finally, it is clear that many people – the people attending rallies, for instance – disapprove of the appearance of videos in shops. The story from Kushtia does not say how many shops carry the videos, how many people have seen them, how many women are depicted, or what the shopkeepers and video-watchers think. We do not know the scope of this harmful behaviour, nor why people justify it to themselves. But we know there is an effort to remove the video from public consumption. This is sympathetic to the victims. To make a public statement against sexual violence in this way is useful in itself, as a way to support the victims and to alter the norms of behaviour.

Like Rehtaeh Parsons, the victims in Kushtia also deserve psychological counselling for trauma, via clinical services such as One-Stop Crisis Centers in Medical College Hospitals. (This is a project of the government’s Multisectoral Programme on Violence Against Women. More information is available at their website.)

All of these efforts can be replicated in other situations where sexual violence occurs. They are the same efforts that are necessary in the US, Canada, and worldwide.

Here in Bangladesh, they also carry an extra meaning. Sexual violence looms large over national history. It was an enormous part of the 1971 Liberation War and in many ways has been the country’s national trauma.

There is no hope of ever undoing the great tragedy of sexual violence of 1971. No one controls the past. But if we treat people experiencing sexual violence in Bangladesh today with compassion and justice, then we are fulfilling the aims of a previous generation. We are resolving the trauma that has marked Bangladesh since its beginning, and creating the Bangladesh that was meant to be.

Bangladesh should build on the positive responses of some people in Kushtia to become exemplary in its treatment of rape victims.