RAPE IS a particularly heinous offence, a horrid invasion not only of the physical person, but, as victims of rape often point out, a sometimes ruinous trampling of one's psychological space.
Indeed, the emotional scars left by rape are often as mountainous as they are deep. The damage, obviously, is likely to be worse when the victims are children.
We therefore understand, and are sympathetic, to the outrage displayed in the Senate last week over the incidence of rape in the society and, increasingly, the reported abuse of children. So angered are most senators by the situation that there was strong support for a proposal by government member, Mr. Norman Grant for a minimum 25-year sentence for persons convicted of rape.
"Let us not leave it to the discretion of judges," Senator Grant said. He wanted to send a signal "that we are serious about the protection of our children".
We agree that a strong message should be sent to rapists and child abusers and that the penalty should be commensurate with the society's view of their crimes. So we support the mandatory 25 years' minimum for someone convicted of rape, if that is what the society believes is appropriate.
However, it would be a fallacy for Senator Grant and his colleagues in the Upper House to believe that a declaration of the punishment at conviction will mean, automatically, a reduction in rape in general or against children in particular. Statements are not of themselves action, which, unfortunately, is an assumption we too often make in Jamaica.
Indeed, this matter of confusing statements of intent for intended results, especially when it comes to the sexual abuse of children, is one on which the senators can take advice from a sitting member of the Lower House, Mr Edmund Bartlett.
In the 1980s when Mr. Bartlett had portfolio responsibility for such matters, he went to Parliament with a complaint about the high incidence of incest, carnal abuse and other forms of child rape. Mr. Bartlett's answer was to move the age of consent from 14 to 16.
The correctness of the decision, of Mr. Bartlett and the Government of the day to lift the age of consent, is not our particular issue, for it is something with which we agree. What is at issue now, as it was then, is whether these reflexive responses to social and other disorders fundamentally address these problems.
For it will make no difference whether sex with an under-age girl is a misdemeanour or felony, or the punishment to be given persons convicted of rape, if the persons who do these things are not held, tried and convicted. That, to us, must be the area of emphasis of the Parliament and the society in general - dragging the society out of its denial of the crisis and the conspiracy of silence, and then, having flushed them out, convicting those who break the law.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
