Sensitising the society about reactions of women to violations.

  

The New York Times carried a news report on the case filed against Mr. Donald Trump whose lawyer questioned the victim asking “Why didn’t you scream”?.  I  believe lawyers handling rape cases need to be sensitised on aspects of victim psychology before venturing into defending the accused.  Many years  ago, I watched Penelope Cruz play the role of  a rape victim. Although the scene was so explicit and the movie otherwise dramatic,  the victim's  reaction to rape by  ‘freezing’. She neither consents nor protests, which  explained a lot about how rape victims could react during moments of such physical violations. The movie bothered me a lot but I thought Penelope was exceptional as was her performance in the movie Vanilla Sky. 

Legally, it is referred to as 'Detection Freezing' . When a woman trusts a man and travels with him to a specific location for a request that seemed with a genuine objective,  the last thing in her mind would be to have consensual sex. When the man takes her for granted only because she agreed to travel with him  and that she may be a willing partner shocks her into a freezing mode that prevents her from  screaming or protesting and  leaving the place with a lot of guilt that she may not disclose the incident even to her best friends.   Recent research claims that humans when exposed to extreme threat in some occasions tend to  react in an involuntary manner resulting in  temporary immobility including motor inhibition which in scientific term known as ‘tonic immobility”. No woman would like to admit that she was a victim of sexual assault especially if she is a professional and a married woman at that and more so if the accused is a colleague in the same industry. The incident leaves the victim with a  deep sense of guilt  since she believed that she had given the accused the opportunity to assault her by trusting him blindly and taking his words at face value. Rape victims who have come forward to file a complaint need to be applauded for their bravery in facing the society, defenders of the accused, and live with the stigma their whole life. Let us be more compassionate towards women who are helplessly struggling with the ‘frozen moments’ of their lives.