“Never blame the victim” is a line I have heard many times –
in Peace Corps sensitivity trainings, in high school and college when learning
to deal with emotional issues of friends, when acquaintances deal with mugging
or robbery, and in pretty much every reading that addresses victim advocacy.
It’s a hard thing to learn and a rule that I have been
working really, really hard to follow here in Tses. In this kind of community,
where Peace Corps volunteers are placed, there are inevitably a lot of victims.
Those who are misjudged based on diseases like HIV; those who fall prey to
gender based violence; those who are abused in other ways by a huge variety of
people. Yet, at least for me, sometimes it is a struggle not to blame the victim,
at least a little bit.
Why did you go out
late at night in a dangerous neighborhood? Why were you wearing such a
provocative outfit? Why were you there in that club?
So this week, when we had a really serious accusation of
abuse brought up at our school, I worked REALLY hard to keep my mouth shut, and
not blame the victim.
We had a grade 8 girl come to afternoon study with a neck so
stiff she couldn’t turn her head and had tears running down her face for almost
an hour. Obviously I, as well as another teacher, pounced on the situation and
after several grueling interviews with her and several friends, thought we had
the story. There is a grade 9 boy in our school (who’s behaviour is atrocious,
by the way) who is her uncle – his father is her grandfather, although they are
only separated by a few years. She said that he had abused her since they were young, but she
had been schooling in another town until this year so it was never a big
problem. Since she had moved back in with her grandfather, the boy apparently
attacked her several times, and on this particular day beat her violently
because she wanted to sleep with someone else. He apparently also confiscated
her phone until they “did the sex.”
Now, from what I could see, this girl was pretty aggressive
herself. She was always swearing at other learners and definitely wore
provocative things when not in uniform. But ok, don’t blame the victim. Women should be able to wear what makes
them happy without a threat of abuse. Don’t
blame the victim. So when the other teachers also started making plans, I
was on board. Let’s get her out of there, we can’t trust the family because the
grandfather will always side with his son (he is well known in our community
for always siding with the son, even when the son is wrong). Let’s act.
Sometimes we don't value kids enough in this society, and parents lose track of what is really important.
This deteriorated into major family drama, and a few days later the
whole family got together in the staff room of our school so that we could help
moderate the conversation.
Don’t blame
the victim. Yet do you know what came out of it, once everyone was together?
The girl has been provoking the boy – pulling down and snapping
her underwear in front of him, among other things. He has tried to protect her
in several cases, and apparently that one day, beat her only after following
her to a boy’s house (where he knew she wasn’t allowed to be) and trying to
bring her home.
Who knows who’s right or who’s wrong at this point – seems like
a weird family drama and we have at least removed the girl so that she can live
in the school hostel away from any potential danger.
But how, the hell, do you not blame the victim, when the victim is doing things like this?!
Some of the teachers got extraordinarily angry because “she was nothing but a
big liar,” which I also don’t totally believe. But at the end of the day,
shouldn’t you also go with some gut instinct to question some of these crazy
stories? And although in the beginning I was reluctant to talk with the girl about
her behaviour (because no victim should be forced to feel like what happened to
them was their fault), should she not be instructed somehow that these things
are not appropriate and will no doubt lead to other ridiculous incidents?!?!?
What do you do??
