“Why don’t women report?” this question often comes up during debates related to sexual harassment in India. During the #MeToo movement, many survivors refused to share their identities yet shared their stories of abuse. We often keep wondering if following the due process is that bad?
The answer is – yes, following due process is not helpful in most of the cases.
I have worked with victims of abuse before. In the cases of domestic violence, police often try to ‘counsel’ the victim to ‘compromise’. I once went to file a complaint on a threat given to me but nothing happened. I filed molestation charges against a person but the reluctance from different places made it worse. Seems like our entire society comes together to shut women up when it comes to speaking against abuse.
The Nightmare: What If Your Abuser Is A Powerful Man?
In the Unnao case, BJP suspended the abuser’s membership only after many protests and outrage. Before that, people went to meet him in jail, supported him and whatnot. The message to the victim was clear – the abuser will be prioritised over you because he is a powerful man.
The survivor lost family members. Before that, she lost her peace of mind, her sense of security and faced the trauma of abuse. There might be many like her, who chose not to speak up, not to file a complaint. Most of the times, families don’t support their daughters when it comes to reporting harassment, and if they do, they face threats, lack of security and in some cases, even social boycott.
The nightmare begins just after harassment when you feel trauma again and again. Many of them keep blaming themselves for the rest of their lives, many fear to be around unknown people, many started to develop mental health issues like PTSD, Depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies.
What’s worse is when your abuser is a man of power, it could be economic, social or political power, which they can misuse and get away with. People might not believe you, gaslight you, blame you, etc. If one analyses this case, then the victim and her family were already feeling unsafe, but nobody listened to them, nobody believed them. It took so many lives and destruction of a family to get considered seriously about the lack of safety.
It also speaks volumes about the right wing’s tendency to get away with violent crimes. They usually have religious power, across the world and in this particular case, political power to get away after abusing a person.
Many victims spend their lifetime in silence because they believe that they will never get justice.
Before this, during the #MeToo movement, many men got away despite being abusers because of their economic and social power. We need to rethink our perspective on why women don’t speak up against abuse and when they do, what happens with them.
Often, men are the first to claim that the victim is ‘lying‘, ‘trying to gain attention‘, ‘trying to defame‘ but why do they do that? The answer is simple, most of them do realise that they have abused a person, but they also know that social norms and their supporters or fans will let them get away with it. Sometimes, they claim so and other abusive men support them in order to feel that they haven’t abused anyone either.
But the question remains the same – if an abuser is more powerful than the victim in social/economic or political aspects, will justice be delivered?