This text references rape, torture, and homicide.
We begin the week in Kenya, the place on Monday, Dickson Ndiema reportedly purchased a can of petrol, poured it over his girlfriend, Olympic long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei, after which set her alight.
Later that day, a trial begins in France. Dominique Pélicot has pleaded responsible to drugging his spouse, Gisèle Pélicot, and alluring greater than 80 males to rape her over the course of a decade. Gisèle, who waived her proper to anonymity to make sure that “no girl suffers this” sooner or later, has been described by one newspaper as taking “public revenge” on her husband and the boys who attacked her.
Whereas one other media outlet refers to her as a “gang-raped spouse”, Gisèle has been reminded by the decide to make use of the phrases “intercourse scene” reasonably than rape when describing one of many males who attacked her whereas she slept, to guard the accused’s presumption of innocence. When describing one other man who allegedly attacked her, she mentioned, “One who was HIV-positive got here six instances. Not as soon as did my husband specific any concern about my well being.” After studying of the assaults, Gisèle found she had 4 sexually transmitted illnesses.
On Thursday, we realized that Rebecca Cheptegei’s organs failed – and that she died in agony.
I need to look away, however I am unable to.
I scroll by means of X, shamefully determined not to consider Rebecca or Gisèle. I see a video of a lady being lashed in public by a Taliban official in Afghanistan. I see that Christiana Idowu, a 21-year-old pupil, has reportedly been kidnapped and killed in Nigeria. I see reside updates of the ‘Kolkata rape case’ in India, the place legal professionals are inspecting the circumstances surrounding the rape and homicide of a 32-year-old trainee physician on the hospital the place she labored. I keep in mind that within the speedy aftermath of her homicide, searches for movies of the crime reportedly spiked on pornography websites.
I need to see these tales as remoted incidents, however I am unable to.
I get up serious about Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, three little women who have been stabbed and killed by a person at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop in Southport. Or about Carol Hunt and two of her daughters, Louise and Hannah, who have been shot with a crossbow by a person of their residence in Hertfordshire. As I write these phrases, I get a information alert {that a} man has been arrested on suspicion of killing Khasha Smith, a younger girl who hasn’t been seen since October 2023.
The burden of the previous couple of years of reporting on male violence towards girls hangs over me – and I really feel responsible that I am not capable of bear it. My ideas typically return to the male violence I’ve skilled, particularly, the way in which one man’s curiosity turned to ecstasy as he attacked me. I am unable to get the picture out of my head.
After which I really feel responsible for making different girls’s ache and loss of life all about me.