To understand the roots of rape culture, Madhumita Pandey, a researcher from the Anglia Ruskin University, spent three years interviewing over 100 convicted rapists. And she came out with some startling revelations about their mental frame.
A student at criminology department of the university in the United Kingdom, Pandey, started interviewing the convicted rapists for her doctoral thesis. She started her work soon after the gang rape and murder of a woman, who was later known as Nirbhaya (the fearless) in New Delhi in December 2012.
Pandey wrote in Quartz: "As one of the first studies to take into account the perspectives of convicted rapists in India...My aim was to understand the attitudes these men have towards their victims and how this thinking contributes to the endemic sexual violence that women experience in the country."
Here are 6 things Madhumita Pandey revealed after interviewing the convicted rapists:
- When Pandey went on for the interviews she was too convinced these men are monsters like most of us. However, her perception changed after the interviews and she said: "But when you talk to them, you realize these are not extraordinary men, they are really ordinary. What they've done because of upbringing and thought process," Washington Post reported.
- Pandey believes that such mentality comes from 'false ideas about masculinity' that men learn from the society and the submissiveness inculcated in women.
- These men don't even understand the word 'consent', Pandey said. "After you speak to [the rapists], it shocks you - these men have the power to make you feel sorry for them. As a woman that's not how you expect to feel. I would almost forget that these men have been convicted of raping a woman. In my experience, a lot of these men don't realise that what they've done is rape. They don't understand what consent is."
- Talking about the highly conservative social attitude in the country and lack of sex education, she said: "Parents won't even say the words like penis, vagina, rape or sex. If they can't get over that, how can they educate young boys?"
- She learnt that only a few feel sorry for what they did as most of them justify the act or blame the victim. She says: "There were only three or four who said they are repenting."
- Pandey mentioned a special case in particular where the convict expressed remorse for raping a 5-year-old girl by saying: "He said 'yes I feel bad, I ruined her life.' Now she is no longer a virgin, no one would marry her. Then he said, 'I would accept her, I will marry her when I come out of jail."The response shocked the researcher so much that she went on to find out the victim. She found the girl's mother. Much to her surprise, Pandey came to know that the victim's family had not even been told that their daughter's rapist was in prison.
