Man kept wife locked in cellar for two years and charged men £4 to rape her
With proliferation in laws and awareness about women’s rights, what has actually escalated is the pseudo-activism of male contributors to feminism. Often can we see women too furnishing for anti-feminist causes, however, the number of men promoting the same has been higher. The irony is that as laws regarding woman-centric crimes are becoming increasingly sturdy, the crime against women is becoming increasingly brutal.
In a recently reported incident of Parszczyce, a northern Polish village, a woman was found captive in a cellar since past two years. Captivated by her husband, the woman had been barbarously abused and raped by him, his friends and other unacquainted men in atrocious ways. Her husband used to charge such unacquainted men 4£ to rape his wife after putting a bag over her head. However, it is merely the tip of the iceberg, because the woman was also coerced to eat sandwiches filled with semen and was made to eat on her knees with both her hands tied. Amounting to such beastly and inhumane acts, the husband and other accomplices have been charged with imprisonment of 25 and 15 years respectively. However, the investigations are still going on as to determine various other men who had raped her.
Such heinous incidents help us to infer that not only the crimes against women are becoming invincible, but the nature and intensity of such crimes is becoming more and more sadistic. The above mentioned incident of December 2018, is an unfortunate conjunction of harassment, forceful confinement, stimulating abuse by putting a price against other rapists, and ruthless coercion. This occurrence has been stated as a dubbing of the monstrous Fritzl Case.
In the Fritzl Case, Josef Fritzl confined Elizabeth, his very own daughter, at an age as young as 18, in a consciously built cellar below his house for a dreadfully long period of 24 years and raped her nearly everyday. During such plight, the captivated woman gave birth to seven children out of which one died, three were taken up by the accused man as foundries and three were raised in the cellar while watching their mother getting raped and abused regularly. She was raped nearly 3000 times in the span of her 24 years captivation along with being compelled to watch pornographic films and being a victim of similar violent scenes that her father watched in such films.
It was only after 24 years, in a year as late as 2008, when this entire scheme of her father came to the notice of the authorities wherein the father had the audacity to defend himself by stating imbecile reasons. However, such reasons were rejected by the court and was taken under lifetime imprisonment. On the other hand, Elizabeth was displaced to an anonymous village, was given a new identity for leading a new and healthy life and was given immunity from taking any interviews or questions by anyone.
This frightful incident has been cited as similar in the formerly discussed case of the wife being raped by husband. The most deplorable part of such happenings is that such a ghastly incident which happened earlier was taken over by another similar incident. This denotes lack of action taken by authorities in producing a deterrent effect of the wrongdoers.
Despite of buoyant activism in favour of feminism, we do come across incidents which take us and our belief in humanity aback. Considering such incidents, absence of humanity instead of feminism takes the front seat and signifies the prevailing brutality in the minds of the people. The offenders are devising various abhorrent means to decimate the basic livelihood rights of another purposelessly. Mere double-folding the number of laws and pseudo-activism in woman rights wouldn’t aid the awful social status woman are confronting, rather an impregnable belief in humanity before femininity would lead to a win-win situation for both these notions. Before attempting to uplift the social status of women, it is imperative to designate her with a status as nominal as a human being so that the elemental rights of dignity and freedom can accrue to her.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: This article is written by Ragini Juneja, our intern. Ragini is a student of law in Amity Law School, Delhi (Affiliated to IP University). She lays immense emphasis on awareness of one’s own rights and entitlements as a precondition for confidence, self-esteem and dignity. Her words strive to help women in unclasping their latent strengths which have been suppressed by male chauvinism.
