Postby md0 » 2018-12-12, 6:54
This might not be the thread for it, but afaik we do not have a rape culture thread. Some disturbing details about sexual abuse follow.
Last week a young woman (19yo iirc) was murdered in the Greek island of Rhodes/Rodos. The suspects under investigation are two young men, a 19 year old Albanian Greek and a 21 year old Hellenic Greek (ethnicity will become relevant). The motive has been established as the 19 year old trying to make the woman agree to a threesome with the 21 year old, and her refusing. I think it's still unclear if the men proceeded to rape her, but the woman was beaten up by either one or both men, and the final act of this abuse was to tie her up while she was alive and throw her down a cliff into the sea, which was what killed her. The two suspects are trying to blame each other and to support they only because accomplices to the murder because the other threatened to kill them if they didn't cooperate.
Former partners of both men came forward as witnesses and they spoke of very abusive men who would force them into sex, would often "share their girls" between them, and so on.
That was horrendous as it was. Both men were detained pending trial. Greek media of course largely focused on the 19 year old Albanian Greek, which has always been a 'criminalised' ethnicity in Greece (and there also recent political tensions with Albania). This led also to some victim-blaming comments by local New Democracy (mainstream lib-con party) politicians along the lines of "tragic incident but what do you expect if you go to bed with illegals?" (vomit-inducing comments regardless, but also a racist distraction, given that both suspects are Greek citizens, and one of them is ethnically Hellenic too).
And here comes the second sexual abuse of this story. The 19 year old, who was detained in isolation pending trial, was somehow extracted from his locked cell by at least 7 other inmates, beaten up, and raped multiple times. That means that prison wardens were either complicit, or completely unable to control the situation.
SKAI TV, a 'rational' and prestige TV channel representing the political leadership of the New Democracy party (so neoliberalism), somehow got hold one of the inmates who participated, and the interview with him was a complete description of rape culture. Not only he explained how being raped was the least he deserved (for his moral crime of killing a woman), but he should also be paraded in prison dressed in woman's clothes, and prostituted at the red light district of Athens. To his "credit", the inmate interviewed said that now they should bring them the Hellenic Greek suspect too, to give him the same treatment. The transcript of that interview I read in the papers was sickening. The prisoner thought of himself as a folk hero more or less, and associated everything feminine with weakness and undesirability.
It's common everywhere I think, to expect that rapists, and especially child rapists will get this treatment in prison (even in detention before trial, apparently). People celebrate prison rapes because they think it's justice served.
Of course, in reality, even if you consider it 'vigilante justice', it's very class based. Rich people who go in for sexual crimes including abuse of children, have a very comfy life in prison and often are leaders of prison rape gangs, or often, in hospital rooms because of some vaguely defined illness they get mid-trial.
And rapes in prison, contrary to what the 'outside world' thinks, are not based on any moral code. In Cyprus around 2013 we had a string of prison rapes that led to suicides of the victims, who where in for drug use or petty theft. But they were often of a migratory background and very young (17-21 years old - we do not have separate facilities for underage criminals in Cyprus, although in practice 14~16 year olds might be forcibly institutionalised ).
And for those prison rapists, what good have they done to the woman whose "no" was not respected and which led to her being murdered? The rape of the suspect played out with exactly the same rules.
It's sickening all around, this story. For a long time I began thinking of imprisonment as a failing of the society. We do it because as a society we have failed to come up with a better solution yet. But allowing, tolerating, or celebrating prison rapes goes beyond just admitting that our justice system is inadequate. Those rapes are preventable.
Last edited by
md0 on 2018-12-12, 12:41, edited 1 time in total.