The importance of the current Sexual Offences Bill, The Mirror

Parliament is reviewing a new Sexual Offences Act which redefines rape; removes the Cautionary Rule whereby courts assumed women may by untruthful in rape cases; and differentiates the sexually acts done by adults to children from acts perpetrated by children on other children.
Parliament is reviewing a new Sexual Offences Act which redefines rape; removes the Cautionary Rule whereby courts assumed women may by untruthful in rape cases; and differentiates the sexually acts done by adults to children from acts perpetrated by children on other children.

• To explore reporting on gender-based violence and the legal system.
• To examine sources of news and context.

Gender-based violence and the legal system

There are many inherent gender biases within the legal and criminal justice systems which work against women’s protection from sexual violence. Due to the poor treatment of women by the legal system, many women do not report when they have been raped.

The legal systems often

• Put too much emphasis on the issue of consent and a woman is often not believed when she says she did not consent, especially where she may know the rapist.
   

• Insufficient evidence – due to the “private” nature of the crime and the fact that women get rid of important evidence when she cleans herself after rape.
   

• As a “single witness” the woman’s evidence is treated with caution.
   

• Where women are mentally disabled, they are considered incapable of giving evidence and without their crucial evidence, the case is dropped and the accused is acquitted.

Also, in a rape case, a great deal of emphasis may be placed on a woman’s prior sexual history or what she wore and how she behaved. On the other hand, the accused’s  prior sexual history is not admissible because the court will generally regard it as irrelevant.

Many of the stories on sexual violence in the media emanate from the courts or police reports. The media either sensationalises these stories, branding women as ‘victims’, or the stories are presented as court reports with no analysis of the underlying issues, laws that influence the outcome of the case.

Reporting on laws calls for a wealth of analytical and gender analysis skills which can be honed in on proposed legislation that may perpetuate gender inequality.

Legislation forms the basis upon which the criminal justice system operates, and is the tool which enables women to claim protection from the law. Legislation also is the basis upon which women are discriminated against by the legal system.

Due to the ‘man-made’ nature of the law, women could be discriminated against in the following ways:

• They are invisible – the law is made by men for the benefit of men;
   

• It is gender-neutral – in this case the law appears to treat men and women equally. However, it has a disproportionate effect on women because it ignores women’s unique circumstances;
   

• It adheres to and perpetuates stereotypes about women. For example, the way a woman is dressed results in her being raped.
   

Sources/Context

‘The importance of the current Sexual Offences Bill’ article is based on a training workshop for journalists on covering gender violence. The journalist has taken this event as the opportunity to highlight, through a presentation made by a woman lawyer, the changes proposed in the country’s Sexual Offences Bill.

Training tip: Ask trainees if they think this issue would have been covered and in the same way, if there had not been a gender violence training workshop?  If yes, why? If not, why not?

Therefore it was an event that brought the law onto the news agenda, and consequently, the story is told through the voice and perspective of one person – the woman lawyer who is a member of Women in Law in Southern Africa.

The advocate’s voice is the source of the analysis of the new proposed Bill. Therefore the gender analysis of the issue and the legislation is provided through her voice. But buy relying on only source, this story could easily have been based on the voice of another advocate who opposes any change in the Sexual Offences Act. What occurrs in both cases of using a single source is that a balanced and different sides of the issue is not given.

The reporter should have used the event as gaining an understanding of the issues and the Bill, and then approached the story by doing a series of interviews with women and men judges, lawyers, citizens, and women and men from human rights and other activists. The article highlights many of the problems within the law and criminal justice system which keep women from reporting and from protection against abuse. These include:

• No clear sentencing policy for sexual offences.
• Limited definition of rape, especially the recognition of marital rape.
• The onus of proving rape is on the woman and not the man.
• More special attention to loopholes which do not protect children, especially young girls, from sexual violence.

The language used in the article is primarily gender neutral, but it continuously refers to women “as victims” rather than as “survivors” of rape. Interestingly while the voice inside the text is that of a woman, the image that accompanies the article is that of the male Minister of Law and Justice. The caption indicates that he has tabled the Bill ‘likely to set our women free’. The message here is that the ultimate decision on women’s protection from sexual violence lies in the hands of a man who is in the position of power.

To provide more context of ‘why’ the need for a new Sexual Offences Bill, the reporter needed to provide:

• Data on the prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence in Lesotho;
   

• Data on who are most vulnerable to sexual violence: elderly women, young women, married women, single women, young girls and boys, eg.
   

• Sex-disaggregated data on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Lesotho.
   

• Background on when the Lesotho Law Reform Commission concluded its work on the Sexual Offences Bill and presented it to the Minister for Parliament. This information would give insight into whether the re-drafting of this Bill was controversial or not and what are likely to be some of the challenges to its adoption by the Parliament.

1. Define sexual violence.
    

2. What are the forms of sexual violence?
    

3. What issues surrounding sexual violence are raised by the Lesotho case study? What are the gender aspects of the issues raised in the article?
    

1. What were the shortcomings of the previous Sexual Offences Bill?
    

2. Are the limitations of the previous Bill addressed in the new proposed Bill under review? If so, how? Explain your answer citing examples from the article.
    

3. What are the gains and the losses for women in the proposed Sexual Offences Bill? Explain your answer citing examples from the article.
    

1. Who speaks?
    

2. What voices and perspective are missing?
    

3. How did this story come onto the media’s agenda – is it event-based, or was it approached as an issue for coverage? Explain answer.
    

4. While women speak in the story, the image accompanying it is that of the male Minister of Law and Justice. What message is conveyed by illustrating the article in this way?
    

5. What information is needed to give the story context?