Call it Rape
An acquaintance once asked the one word Kenyan journalists are extremely fond of throwing around. The almost unanimous answer was ‘defiled’ closely followed by ‘had carnal knowledge’ of someone or an animal.
I’m still trying to understand the words ‘forcefully raped’ and ‘indecently assaulted’ also found in the Kenyan journalist’s lexicon. As if one can be agreeably raped or decently assaulted.
You can see where this is going.
Innocently packaging acts of brutality in mild and obscure passive tones will not make it go away. Rape is an actuality and people are living it.
Pamela was raped as were these teenagers. Nyawira was not defiled. She was raped.The age of consent in Kenya is 16 so these pupils were raped too.
Call it by its rightful name.
Rape.
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The word “rape” is feared by many but some love doing the act. They dont know it might occur to them or a close relative of theirs. Together lets fight this monster
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Rape: Forced sexual intercourse with a person within the legal age of consent.
Defilement: The same with a minor.
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True, rape not only destroys physically but also psychologically. It is one of the most brutal of crimes against humanity. When it happens to a child, the physical and psychological damage is even worse, so why try to sugarcoat it? I would prefer if we even got a nastier word that amplified its repulsiveness. The term defilement though widely accepted and documented as the “approved description,” gives an impression of a lighter crime. It is high time we called a spade a spade and fought this abomination with the seriousness required.
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@akenyanman
you got that right. My qualms with the word defiled is that it makes the survivor feel dirty or soiled, somehow blaming them for a crime they had no control over.
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Well, we cannot run away from the fact that rape and defilement are both criminal offences that besmirch the victim in ways hard to imagine. It is the vilest and most abominable of all crimes that man can mete against man, a beastly and revolting act that deserves all the condemnation and vitriol in this forum. However, I beg to differ that labelling the ‘carnal knowledge’ of a minor ‘defilement’ amounts to cheapening the crime. There is absolutely no way any can become a lesser crime based on the tags we ascribe each. For professional purposes, we in the media have to distinguish between the rape of an adult and that of a minor. For quite some time, it has been the norm to term cases where a man has ‘conscientious’ sex with a girl of, say, 14 years, as defilement. I quote ‘conscientious’ because, though most of these young girls consent to the act, they are regarded by law as still below the age of consent.
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Rape: Forced sexual intercourse with a person within the legal age of consent.
Defilement: The same with a minor.
Well, we cannot run away from the fact that rape and defilement are both criminal offences that besmirch the victim in ways hard to imagine. It is the vilest and most abominable of all crimes that man can mete against man, a beastly and revolting act that deserves all the condemnation and vitriol in this forum. However, I beg to differ that labelling the ‘carnal knowledge’ of a minor ‘defilement’ amounts to cheapening the crime. There is absolutely no way any can become a lesser crime based on the tags we ascribe each. For professional purposes, we in the media have to distinguish between the rape of an adult and that of a minor. For quite some time, it has been the norm to term cases where a man has ‘conscientious’ sex with a girl of, say, 14 years, as defilement. I quote ‘conscientious’ because, though most of these young girls consent to the act, they are regarded by law as still below the age of consent.
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What really irks me is that defilement carries a bigger sentence than murder. Wagner got more punishment than that inbred delamere
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