Overcoming Trauma

"Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days.
"She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome."
Dr. Kevin Loh, chief executive, Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore

What the Indian government and society in general preferred to ignore in the sexist failures of their traditional culture of male domination, of female vulnerability in the lifetime of the 23-year-old physiotherapist university student, they were anxious to correct as best they could in the aftermath of a horrendously bestial assault on two young people planning to marry and looking toward their future together.

Indian protesters light candles around a mannequin representing the rape victim during a rally in Delhi. Photograph: Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

There is no future now for either of them.  She is dead, and he witnessed the gruesomely horrible method of her death, while himself being beaten, unable to defend her from the evil that overtook their lives.  Not only was she repeatedly gang-raped over a prolonged period of time by six men utterly devoid of any human sensitivities, but her rapists also repeatedly jammed an iron rod into her abdomen, destroying her visceral organs.

The surgical specialists in Indonesia, specializing in organ transplant, were incapable of doing anything to save her life.  Not only were her internal organs destroyed, but she suffered irreparable brain damage; her life hung on a slender thread of hope for her survival.  When the six attackers had finished desecrating her body and beating her boyfriend, they concluded the atrocity by stripping them both and flinging them as garbage from the moving bus where the attack had taken place.

The country is now, finally,  facing the reality of dreadful abuse and danger present in the everyday lives of Indian women and children.  Despite the horrendous crime and its reportage and obvious general knowledge, there has been no respite in the severity and commonality of these attacks.  Others, women and girls, have since been gang-raped, and some of them murdered, their bodies dumped as refuse.

These atrocities are so common that they elicit little response from police.  Distraught women may approach police to report what has occurred to them but there are no guarantees that their complaints will have a sympathetic hearing and that they can expect due process of law to induce justice.  Women are doubly penalized; their claims of attack are dismissed, and when it becomes common knowledge, their families face disgrace.

Women reporting that they have been victims of violent physical attacks risk being ridiculed and humiliated by the very law enforcement agents that exist for the purpose of protecting society.  Their abusers escape justice because men feel in their patriarchal society, in which women are treated like casual commodities, that they are entitled to take whatever they please.

Protests over the death of gang rape victim 'Damini' have taken place across India. Photograph: Harish Tyagi/EPA

Disrespect for basic human rights, for the safety and security of women vulnerable to men's violent psychotic outbursts is tolerated because it is just too much trouble to become upset about a cultural failing that has been part of this particular society for far too long.