Likely due to the perception that male rape victims are virtually non-existent, many people feel that mainstream media coverage of sex crimes should be focused on female victims.
Yet, I read a shocking article, headlined “‘Grave Sexual Abuse’: When the Word Rape Doesn’t Apply To Boys” [by Zahara Dawoodbhoy, 21 Sep 2020], about a South Asian nation/culture in which men have been raping boys, with impunity.
There, girls’ vaginal virginity is traditionally/normally verified before an arranged marriage takes place; however, boys are neither arranged to be married nor their ‘virginity’ ever verified, and therefore they cannot be ‘spoiled’ thus considered raped.
The following relevant segment is taken from the article:
… ‘SHIPS DON’T LEAVE TRACKS ON WATER’
According to the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, the word ‘rape’ is defined as a man having sex with a woman, under specific circumstances that lack consent. The rape of boys—and men— therefore, do not fall under this official legal definition, and the crime instead gets tried as ‘grave sexual abuse’. Although the punishment for the two offences is the same, the euphemism used to describe rape when it occurs to boys points to larger social attitudes of who we consider can be victims.
“I think there is a myth that it only happens to female children, and that has to do with the cultural aspect of people feeling that rape is a female-related issue,” Sonali Gunasekera, Senior Director of Advocacy at the Family Planning Association (FPA) told Roar Media. “That is probably why this archaic law is still in place — because that’s how it was seen from afar.”
Despite this myth, the fact remains that instances where young boys are raped in Sri Lanka are surprisingly frequent. Director of the Child Protection Force, Milani Salpitikorala, says that 90% of her current cases involve young boys, and the idea that the boy child is somehow less susceptible to sexual abuse and rape in this country is completely false.
“Our mindsets are set in a culture of ‘Don’t worry about your child if he is a boy,’ but the boy child is as unsafe in the hands of perpetrators as much as the girl child is, if not more,” she said.
In 1997, a community study was conducted on university students in Sri Lanka, where a questionnaire was administered to two sets of undergraduates—one that had heard a lecture on child abuse prior to completing the survey, and one that had not. In both groups, the percentage of boys that admitted to being sexually abused during their childhood was higher.
Despite these findings, little research has been conducted looking into the demographics of child rape, and prevalant social attitudes around gender continue to erase boys from the demographic of people considered to be rape victims. Even when the abuse does come to light, it is shrugged off by the idea that ‘ships don’t leave tracks on water’, which is a phrase used to imply that because there is no physical virginity to be lost, no harm has been done.
“In many cases I have seen, families and peers of young boys who are being sexually abused don’t take it seriously because the ‘issue’ of virginity doesn’t come into play,” Thushara Manoj, Senior Manager for advocacy at the FPA told Roar Media. “When a girl gets raped, this is seen as an issue because it is believed her virginity has been compromised, and she also has the capacity to become pregnant from it. This means that her marriage prospects will suffer, and there is a risk of her abuse becoming apparent.”
But with boys, Manoj explains that this fear does not exist, and as a result, families are unlikely to intervene, especially if the perpetrator is a member of the family or community at large.
A VICIOUS CYCLE
Like all victims of rape and sexual abuse, boys face severe psychological trauma as a result of their abuse. For Mahesh, it took almost two decades for him to process his abuse, and only at 29 was he able to admit what had happened.
“I had a lot of self-hatred, and for most of my life, I would not acknowledge that I had been raped as a child because I felt that as a man, I should have been able to protect myself and fight,” he said. “It was only five years ago, when I was working in [activist] spaces and was surrounded by these narratives of how victims are never to blame that I was finally able to admit that there was nothing wrong with me, and what had happened was completely the fault of [the perpetrator]”.
Mahesh admits he was able to take significant steps towards healing as a result of being exposed to more empathetic narratives and surrounding himself with people whom he felt would not blame him for the abuse he had suffered. But in Sri Lanka, this kind of support and understanding from community members is rare, and many male victims of rape become trapped in a cycle of abuse that often carries on to the next generation.
Although male children are raped and sexually abused at the same rate, if not more, than female children, common misconceptions about gender roles allow for this crime to be treated lightly, or ignored altogether. In the same 1997 community study, a significant finding was that 71% of males who had abused younger children had been abused themselves during childhood. Salpitikorala has also found this to be true.
“From our cases we have come to realise that boys could develop perpetrator behaviour after facing the trauma of being abused themselves,” she said. While the reasons behind this are multifaceted, it is important to note that the primary cause of this phenomenon is rarely the sexual abuse itself, but rather external factors such as damaging expectations of masculinity and a lack of healthy outlets for boys to express emotions that hinder them from processing their abuse.
It is also important to note that while there is evidence to suggest that the majority of males accused of child sex crimes have a childhood history of sexual abuse, the same is not true the other way around: Most victims of sexual abuse in childhood will not become perpetrators of sexual assault, and a history of sexual victimisation is not a necessary or sufficient condition to sexually offend. …
*[Name has been changed to protect identity.]
Source article: Roar Media Archive - 'Grave Sexual Abuse': When the Word Rape Doesn’t Apply To Boys