From the perpetrators view
September 26th 2008 10:33
The escalating violent crimes committed against the female members of the society poses a serious threat to the basic fabric of the Namibian society. This reflects badly on the country’s social health in terms of the cultural aspects of the patriarchal society and the often-violent colonial past that is perpetuated in post-independent Namibia.
A research recently conducted by the Women’s Action for Development (WAD) managed to draw out of the perpetrators what prompted them to violate their victims’ fundamental human rights. The rationale of the research was to get an insight into the male perpetrators’ and the reasons for committing such atrocious violence against women.
The family backgrounds of the perpetrators can have a profound impact on their subsequent behavioral patterns. It emerged from discussions with the inmates that their early formative years had largely been unstable.
“I am a very talkative and naughty person. I grew up with my mother and grandmother, and was a sick baby. I only started to walk and speak for the first time at the age of five years. When I was naughty, I was always spanked.
At school I met the wrong friends; we formed gangs, were involved in fights and chased girls around. I met my first girlfriend when I was in Grade 5. After that, I stayed with friends who used alcohol, dagga and other drugs, and I also started using drugs. In Grade 7, I left school.
In December 1998, I met a white man called Nameless. Me and the white man would take peoples’ belongings and sell them to the traditional doctors. One Saturday, my friend [accomplice] and I and the white man and a policeman spent the day together. After we became drunk one of us mentioned that we
At the detention cells where females were kept, the policeman mentioned that the women were available. The cells were opened for one young girl and we told her that we were assisting her to escape. When she wanted to refuse to go with us, we forced her to go with us. The young girl was raped by my friend
and by me. Then my friend took a big stone and threw her with the stone on the head.
“I was born in 1979. Both my parents died when I was small, and I was brought up by my aunt. My aunt had been in different relationships because she was divorced about three times. She was a teacher at a school far from home.
After I completed Grade 12, I also became a teacher. I was working and supporting the family. My aunt told me that children in the family should respect me. Often when they did not respect me, I became aggressive. I had the power to control the household and everyone was scared of me. I had a girlfriend. I used to punish the children whenever I wanted to go and collect my girlfriend [every time the aunt was not at home]. I was even beating them up physically.
I was accused of raping a cousin. She said in court, “He raped me in the sitting room, no … no … no … it was in the bedroom.” She also said the police refused to let her go for a medical check-up, because she had showered already. But she was examined and everything was negative, i.e. her virginity had broken a long time ago, and there was no recent penetration, no signs of rape. But the Magistrate refused to believe the doctor’s report, and whenever I wanted to ask questions, I was told I do not have any respect and that I had no right whatsoever to challenge the law. I was sentenced to 15 years in prison,” revealed another inmate.
Amongst the inmates it has been concluded that most of the crimes that were committed were a direct result of them not having had proper parental guidance or a stable family environment. They had grown up in very unstable environments and their role models were in most cases their peers, with whom they felt the need to belong to a cult.
Socioeconomic status has also been found to play a pivotal role into family violence within the broader context of the social fabric. Persona coming from low socioeconomic status exhibit most of the forms of violence and hence partner abuse is more prevalent in this group.
This state of affairs it has been argued, can lead to the commission of petty crimes for survival, with severe consequences particularly for women and girls.
“My mother is a single mother who is unemployed. She could not provide me with the things I needed or pay for my school fees. At the age of 12, I began to look for things for myself. I became friends with bad guys and we broke into cars and snatched peoples handbags for survival. At times we even did housebreaking.
One day, my friends (four of them) and I saw a guy and his girlfriend going home in the evening. We wanted to rob them then, but found out they had nothing. The guy was very aggressive and he was fighting to prevent us from hurting his girlfriend. We then beat him up, tied him and raped his girlfriend,” confided an inmate at one of the prisons in Namibia.
The research indicated that a salient socio-demographic risk factor for the perpetration of violence against women and girls has been shown by family violence research to be the influence of an individual’s early exposure to violence within the family of origin.
Alcohol plays a part in violence in the family set up. Perpetrators however hold the view that they are not responsible for their actions when drunk – that they “can’t control” themselves, as in the case of this inmate:
I grew up with parents. I never went to school. When my parents died, my uncle took me to his farm and I stayed there for a very long time. One day I decided to go visit my family. There my family got a wife for me.
When it was time to go back to the farm, my family refused: “You cannot keep on looking after someone’s cattle, rather stay with your wife.” Both my wife and me were drinking and smoking a lot. One day I saw my wife standing in the darkness with another man, and when they saw me, the man ran away. When I asked her about that person, she started insulting me and shouting at me. I was drunk and could not control myself. I started beating her until she died. I was arrested and brought to prison, and sentenced to 17 years.
WAD concluded that alcohol and drug abuse are the leading contributing factors to domestic violence against women and girls in Namibia. The influence of assumptions (perhaps culturally based) regarding “obedience” and financial problems related to unemployment are significant.
There exists a significant relationship between domestic violence and other social problems that include the lack of food at home, and males not getting any sex. These social problems as they relate to domestic violence are ongoing, and call for a long-term in-depth study of their impact on Namibian society. Possible solutions to social problems such as domestic violence would require complex social policies, as well as attitudinal changes related to cultural beliefs.
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