What is “normal?”

The discovery over the weekend of the body of a young girl who had been raped, strangled and thrown in a ditch and the discovery of yet another fetus, thrown away in a drain like garbage, have cast a dark shadow over the community.
Another young girl was stabbed and raped in a separate incident.

These are just a few of the reported cases and one shudders to think of the many incidents of violent crime that are not reported to the police due to fear of intimidation and revenge.

The good intentions of Women’s Month have been scarred by these and other incidents.

One can easily be lulled into the view that incidents of crime like these are “normal” events for any society in any part of the country over a weekend.

But is it “normal” or nothing out of the ordinary? This may be so statistically, but statistics are cold and hard.

The lives that were taken, the people that were stabbed or raped are not cold and hard. They were and are warm-blooded individuals who had every right to go about their everyday business just like everybody else.

It is right and fitting that young girls are warned not to walk alone late at night or in secluded places – fate must not be tempted.

On the other hand, what gives a man the “right” to accost and rape a woman simply because she is alone or dressed in a certain way? How does one reason that “she was looking for it” simply by her being alone?

Any female has the right to be left alone and to go about her business in peace and without fear of men who prey on them to satisfy their own sordid desires.

The view that “these things happen in normal societies” speaks volumes of the way in which society has come to accept what is “abnormal” as “normal”.