Sexual assaults are more prevalent

Dec 20, 2017 Editorial

The extent of sexual harassment being reported by women in the United States is mindboggling. Scarcely a day goes by without a woman or a group of women coming out to accuse some male of inappropriate sexual behaviour in the office.
Yesterday, three women came forward to report on Dustin Hoffman, one of the better actors of his generation. As was the case in all the other stories the women who made the claims of sexual harassment were traumatized. While recounting their tales, they would be reduced to tears; for them the memory is still painful.
It is amazing how such incidents snowball. The first report involved movie director Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein is an American film producer. He and his brother Bob Weinstein co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films, including Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), The Crying Game (1992), and Pulp Fiction (1994).
The accusations only came in October. Dozens of women came forward to talk of the sexual assaults and the unwanted sexual attention that Weinstein provided. Not surprisingly, this round of accusations followed the allegations against comedian Bill Cosby. He was accused of raping loads of women. Some of Cosby’s accusers accused him of dragging them then raping them.
His story and the accusations dated back more than 30 years. It was the same with some of the other accusations. The American society with its moral standards would not consider asking why the women would sit for so long with the pain of the harassment.
A shocker came when NBC anchor and big wig, Matt Lauer, was identified as one of the men who sexually harassed his staff. From the disclosures by the women, the females around him presented him a feeding trough.
There have been no such reports in Guyana. In fact, there have been none in our corner of the world but this does not mean that men do not take advantage of the women working in the office alongside them. It is an open secret that many of the women in the workplace had to engage in sex acts with the employer or supervisor.
Just recently a policewoman offered details of what transpires in the Guyana Police Force. She said that most of the women who gained promotion at the lower level had to agree to sexual favours. No one has come out to deny the allegation. And this is expected because when the list is compiled one may find that the incident is not as rare as people want to believe.
In this corner of the world the society readily accepts men harassing women. Just recently one judge suggested that the woman was to blame for the rape. Even pastors contend that women by the way they dress provoke men to sin. This is a far cry from what happens in the United States at this time.
It is unfortunate that men for the greater part see every woman as a sex object. No woman can reasonably go about her business without attracting the attention of the men. Many men not satisfied with cat calls resort to touching and groping. Some do reach the courts.
In Guyana, because men are often not content with the harassment, take matters a couple of steps further. They rape. It is not surprising that most of the rape cases do not reach the courts because women, if allowed to, would keep their dark secret to themselves. The woman who pulled the plug on Matt Lauer is now one scared woman.
She wants her identity to remain a secret.

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