Striking a Feudal Anachronism

By the end of this week, the Peruvian Congress is expected to strike from the books an archaic, insulting law that for decades has shattered the dignity and the lives of untold numbers of women. Gone will be the statute that lets rapists go free if they agree to marry their victims.

The Peruvian decision will set a precedent for 13 other Latin American countries with similar laws. Each should join Peru in closing this aberrant chapter of social custom.

The justice committee of Peru’s Congress voted unanimously Tuesday to eliminate what in effect was legally sanctioned sexual oppression. In what Americans would consider a feudal anachronism, many Latin cultures consider rape a crime against the honor of the family of the victim, not for what it plainly is: a violent criminal assault on a woman.

With no consideration for the victim or her predicament, social pressure has institutionalized laws that add insult to injury by the professed settling of a matter of honor. The rapist marries his victim and family honor is restored. The woman has no legal say in the matter.

This reasoning or a variation is law in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Venezuela. In all these cultures, a marriage between the victim and her assailant erases the stain on family honor. This may be a perverted male justice, but there is no application of individual human rights for the woman.

In the case of Peru, at least 25,000 women are reported raped each year, but few rapists ever face legal action. Even those who are charged can successfully stake a defense on accusations that the victim was disreputable. Often the defense is that the woman was wearing “provocative clothing.”

With this sorry precedent, the expected decision of the Peruvian Congress should be applauded, and its example should lift the blindfold from other countries whose rape laws are stuck in archaic times.