An Epidemic of Violence

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Last Wednesday, Newsweek reported that authorities in Pakistan had apprehended a key suspect in the gang rape of a female polio worker. 

If you didn’t hear about it, you’re not alone—the news barely registered around the world; it had too many similarly gruesome stories to compete with. 

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that a former CIA officer who drugged, sexually assaulted and photographed more than two dozen women had been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

On the same day, in southern France, a man on trial for repeatedly drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her, admitted to a court that he was, indeed, a rapist.

Also on Thursday, the BBC reported that it had spoken to more than 20 women who say that Mohamed Al Fayed, the late billionaire owner of the British department store, Harrods, had raped or sexually assaulted them, and that Harrods had not only failed to intervene, but had also covered up the abuse allegations. (As of this writing, some news outlets had put the number of women as high as 37.)

Just as that news was spreading, the music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was arrested following raids on two of his properties in March as part of an "ongoing investigation" into sex trafficking. And Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, who in 2020 was found guilty of rape and sexual assault (a conviction that was overturned in April of this year), pleaded not guilty to a new sex-crime indictment. 

Finally, on Friday, statistics from the Metropolitan Police in London showed that 8,800 rape incidents were reported in the city last year: That’s 24 each day. One every hour. 

A Full-Blown Crisis

In a single week, the world has been served up enough evidence to quash any doubt that a pervasive culture of sexual violence and domestic abuse is thriving almost everywhere. 

From Australia, where recent research showed that 1 in 5 Australians have perpetrated sexual violence in their adult lives—to Kenya, where a Ugandan marathon runner returning from the Paris Olympics was this month burned to death by her ex-partner—and to Afghanistan, where surviving violence and abuse is just part of being a woman—the headlines are deeply distressing to read, let alone process.

But read we must. And then we must share and discuss and castigate. It is our collective duty to confront how unscrupulous and abhorrent a human is capable of being. Avoidance is cowardly. Ignorance is irresponsible.

Few things are grimmer than the unrelenting wave of stories about assaulted women—about misogyny-fuelled rape and murder, and about heinous abuses of power. One thing that is worse though, is the realization that so many of these stories remain untold. In many countries, rape is the most under-reported crime. In the U.S., some 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. 

In countless places, violence toward a woman is dressed up as preserving the family honor, or a social code, or just the natural order of things. Frequently, it’s brushed off as something she was asking for—that she “got what was coming” because of what she said, or how she dressed, or the way she touched her hair.

And afterward? The all-too-predictable silence. 

Too often, women are cowed by fear and shame and guilt which can muffle; even paralyze. This also protects perpetrators and allows crimes to be repeated over and over again. The inaction of the world looking in—if it notices these crimes at all—creates a perpetual cycle. And on we go.

A Through-Line

Faced with the agonizing reality of what’s going on in the world, it’s easy to feel powerless. But even just acknowledging that these crimes are connected—that they’re extensive and systemic—is an important act. 

It’s not a coincidence that monstrous offenses are happening all at once. It’s evidence that something is profoundly wrong in our societies; a reminder, lest we forget, that we have huge problems to fix.

I’m not naive. I know that nothing is going to change in the space of a month or even a year. But in time, when we refrain from electing politicians who fuel the casualization of misogyny; when we stop idolizing celebrities who do the same; when corporations resist the urge to hide ‘bad behavior’ in the interest of defending their bottom lines; and when tech companies finally wake up to the fact that they have a moral and legal obligation to assume the duties of care that come with their sheer size and power, things—ever so slowly—might begin to evolve. 

For now, here’s what we can do: Keep telling their stories: Rebecca Cheptegei, Gisèle Pelicot, Sarah Everard, Samantha Murphy, Kesaria Abramidze.

And remember: Most of the names are names we’ll never know. Most of the stories won't make the news. Most of the suffering will never be seen.

The fading memories are a painful testament to an inconvenient, awful fact: That we’ve collectively, catastrophically, failed each other.

Josie Cox is a journalist, author, broadcaster and public speaker. Her book, “WOMEN MONEY POWER: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality,” was released earlier this year.