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High Court trial exposes grisly aspect of rape

30 Jun, 2014 - 12:06 0 Views

The ManicaPost

THE High Court trial of a convicted rapist who is facing three counts of murder and an attempted murder charge for the alleged butchering of his victims in cold blood is a sorry chapter for the Mayo community in Headlands.
Without prejudicing proceedings that are underway before Justice Charles Hungwe in Mutare and also bearing in mind that an accused person is perceived innocent until proven guilty, the gory narrations of the Mayo murders in which decomposed bodies of mothers were found beside those of their babies are unimaginable.

Rape is a crime that is badly affecting women and girls for its effects haunt the victim for the entire duration of their lives. This explains why there is a worldwide movement towards the enactment of harsh penalties for perpetrators of such heinous acts.
What is striking with the Mayo cases is the alleged brutality the victims were subjected to after being raped.

The State, which is using confessions made by the accused Patrick Madhume, as their only evidence against him, alleged that after he raped the two women, he killed them using stone boulders.

He allegedly did so until they breathed their last.
As if that was not enough, he allegedly turned his rage on the babies whom he struck with the stones with the same intensity he applied on their mothers.

One of the breastfeeding babies died together with her mother while the other survived but sustained serious head injuries. She had a skull fracture.

Had it not been that the accused confessed before a prophet, the mystery murders were going to haunt the Mayo community for life because no one would ever really know what happened to the victims.

Post-mortem was not carried out because the bodies had decomposed.
It is the wish of everyone that justice must take its course.

We console the husbands whose wives and children were killed for they are going through a difficult time in life.
We urge them to soldier on and be patient till the truth of the matter comes out.

We know and understand that they are eager to see the speedy completion of the case, but the court is always guided by best practices in delivering justice.

Slow as it may seem justice will eventually prevail.
As Justice Hungwe heard the case some family members of the deceased who could not fathom deliberations therein walked out with tears on their cheeks. It’s an emotional case which clearly brings out the urgency with which punitive measures need to be put in place to curb rape.

It also brings out the need with which families need to view rape as a threat which they need to guard against by employing proactive measures to protect each other.

Women and girls need to be protected and one way of doing so is to ensure that they don’t travel alone at night or in secluded areas even during daylight.

With the rate at which the fairer sex is being subjected to rape, especially in the rural areas where most of the cases go unreported, we call on pressure groups to up their act and kick start an awareness blitzkrieg.

Most of the villagers in the rural areas have little knowledge of rape and that explains why young girls are often sent alone on long distances to the grinding mill at the mercy of criminals.

We feel that if sufficient education is availed to these communities, villagers will somewhat employ precautionary measures to safeguard the vulnerable.

At least the police, with help from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, are disseminating vital information to curb sexual abuse in rural communities.

Those campaigns help a lot for they empower young girls with knowledge and skills about how to protect themselves.

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