High Court Judge release Rapist to mediate with Victim

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b78_story.html

CHENNAI, India — In a country still struggling to deal with widespread violence against women, an Indian judge has touched off a firestorm by suggesting that a rape victim and her attacker try to heal their rift in the hope of a happy ending.

When Madras High Court Judge P. Devadass recently let a rapist out of prison on bail so he could “mediate” with his victim, it caused an uproar among legal scholars and women’s rights activists.

The move was deemed “retrograde,” “misogynistic” and simply bad jurisprudence. Lawyers who work in the courthouse’s mediation center wrote a letter to the chief justice, demanding that Devadass’s order be rescinded. India’s Supreme Court, weighing in on a different case, said last week that any compromise between a rape victim and a perpetrator would be a “spectacular error.”

Devadass, a former family court judge, declined through staff members to discuss his order. But critics say it provides a glimpse of the patriarchal attitudes still prevalent in the male-dominated Indian judiciary.

More than two years after the fatal gang-rape of a student brought protesters to the streets and a clarion call for change, judges in India continue to create controversy with their comments in rape cases. One judge asserted that child prostitution is not rape, and another suggested that women who have premarital sex are prone to make accusations of rape or kidnapping later.

The lawyers in the Madras High Court mediation center, an alternative to the overburdened court system, arbitrate mostly civil cases and have called Devadass’s order “highly inappropriate.” They said it reinforces centuries-old Indian cultural stereotypes — that a woman who is the victim of sexual violence should marry her assailant to protect her honor, especially if a baby is born as a result of the assault.

“The thinking is if there has been a rape, there has been sexual contact and, therefore, the best solution for her would be to marry the man,” said Geeta Ramaseshan, a Madras High Court lawyer and mediator. “It’s a very patriarchal mind-set.”
Rape and conviction

The victim, now 22, vividly remembers what happened to her in 2008. The aunt who raised her was at a funeral in a nearby town, she said, leaving her to baby-sit children at a neighbor’s house.

The neighbor’s son, V. Mohan, a college student, had been nasty to her in the past but was friendly this time, offering her a cold beverage. She soon became dizzy and passed out. When she came to, she was lying on the floor. Mohan beckoned her over to show her his cellphone. He had photographed the assault and threatened to use the images to blackmail her, she said.

“To this day, I do not know the reason why he raped me,” the woman said recently.

A week after the rape, she broke down and told a friend. Word spread in the village, a cluster of just three lanes in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Her father, an alcoholic who was an itinerant presence in her life, beat her. “Why did you not tell us?” relatives demanded.

Her family went to the police to file a report. The situation worsened when it became clear that she was pregnant. A DNA test later confirmed Mohan’s paternity. He and his parents offered to pay a $3,000 settlement if she had an abortion. Even the village elders weighed in, also urging her to terminate the pregnancy.

Mohan was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to seven years in prison. Last year, he filed an appeal.

In his recent order, Devadass ruminated that women are often the “soft targets of male lust” and lamented that there were two victims in this case: the woman as well as the child born as a result of the rape.

“Now, [the victim] has become mother of a child,” the judge wrote. “But as on date, she is nobody’s wife. So, she is an unwed mother. Now there is a big question mark looming large before [the victim] as well as her child, who is completely innocent.”

The judge deemed that mediation was the best option in this case, noting that he had recommended it on another occasion earlier this year, with the rapist agreeing to marry the victim, a case now heading toward a “happy conclusion.”


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