BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Unless mistaken, I sense a general lack of any public response from national or regional women’s organisations, as well as from women cabinet ministers and women in the legal profession within our Caribbean Community (Caricom) on two very disturbing cases involving the heinous, degrading crime of rape.

One of the cases involves the courage of two white British women who have exposed themselves to the public as victims of rape while separately visiting Barbados. They subsequently became involved in a legal battle to win the freedom of the black Barbadian man they said was wrongfully charged with raping them, separately, and imprisoned for 18 months.

Once freedom was won in the court for rape accused Derick Crawford, the two women — Dr Rachel Turner and Diane Davies — were to further express outrage over the apparent closure of the case by the Barbados Police Force and their failure, so far, to secure an interview with Police Commissioner Darwin Dottin. This is a development in progress.

The second rape case, most horrific, shocking and still being internationalised, was that of a 23-year-old Indian medical student. She died last week in a hospital in Singapore after being gang-raped on a bus in Delhi, then thrown out of the vehicle an hour or so later, along with her badly beaten boyfriend.

Lest we lose a quality of our humanity by becoming immune to the very degrading crime of rape that’s afflicting all Caribbean nations and the world at large, it seems necessary for voices of outrage to be raised and appropriate swift action pursued to have perpetrators of this horrible crime face the harshest possible penalty, once found guilty in a court of law.

I am opposed to the death penalty for murder. But it is most challenging to disagree with advocates who seek such a punishment when confronted with examples of sheer barbarism as occurred in the case of the now dead medical student and the charge of murder slapped on her depraved molesters.

We would be aware of many examples of women in Caribbean and other societies, developed and underdeveloped, who felt compelled to commit suicide after falling victim to rape.

More shockingly so when the rapist happens to be a family member, cousin or friend. Worse, a father, step-father, or brother and when the word ‘incest’ is expediently used in cases of cowardly, vulgar acts of rape, forcing the victims — teenagers or adult women — to commit suicide. It is even more brutish when a child is forced to leave school to shelter a life-changing pregnancy.

The sickening, bizarre degradation of women by rape — now increasingly being used as a weapon of war in too many societies — is often compared with the barbarism of self-righteous cowards in other societies, influenced by questionable religious and cultural claims, to stone to death women, allegedly involved in “unlawful” sexual relations, and without even mentioning the male involved.

In our Caribbean today, half-a-century after the dismantling of British colonialism, first in Jamaica and secondly in Trinidad and Tobago, too many women victims of rape — old and young — still suffer in silence and continue to survive with the agony of their degradation rather than summon the courage — by no means an easy act — to expose their criminal violators.

Admirable example

Consequently, such criminal elements are emboldened to repeat their acts of human degradation and even share their exploits with depraved colleagues.

That’s why I am concerned over the current failure by national and regional women’s organisations to at least express some public interest in the admirable case of the two British women in Barbados.

It is indeed rare for two women victims of rape, anywhere, to become so publicly involved in ensuring justice for a man wrongfully charged and imprisoned for raping them and now insisting on a meeting with the country’s police commissioner to further explain the relevant circumstances of the case and voice their insistence that the real rapist is still at large.

At the time of writing, the much respected Barbados police commissioner was still maintaining that the cops who initially handled the case had done a thorough probe. However, he has now also signalled a willingness to meet with Rachel Turner and Diane Davies — the two brave rape victims who are showing their own keen interest in upholding the rule of law.