Warning: This blog post post contain information about a highly brutal sexual assault case. Please read with caution.
On a December night in 2012 a young woman, age 23, and her male friend were on their way home from the movie theater. They found a private bus with a young man who convinced them that the bus was in service. However, the night was not what they had imagined when six men on the bus including the bus driver beat her friend with an iron rod. Then proceeded to sexually assault her with the iron rod and gang raped her. After assaulting the two the six men deposited the pair off to the side of the road. Because of severe damage to her intestines due to penetration using the iron rod she died two weeks after the assault. All six accused men were arrested after police investigation and awaited the death penalty.
As shocking as this case is, the brutality was not what caught my attention. Instead what drew me to this case was the relevance to consequentialism in a recent interview of one of the gang rapist. Recently an interview clip was released showing one of the gang rapist, Singh's, opinion of his sentence. In regards to the death penalty Singh stated, "Now when they rape, they won't leave the girl like we did. They will kill her (Mosbergen)". The rapist believes that execution will make sexual assault instances even more dangerous to women, because after being raped the rapist will definitely kill the victim.
Situations like these can be a challenge to consequentialist outlook, "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can (Shafer-Landau 119)." One might think how is it possible to have any good come out of this horrid situation. It is not always easy to apply this concept to real life situations.
In this particular case say we take into account Singh's suggestion. If it is true that executing the rapists would bring more harm than good for women in India, then a consequentialist would definitely choose to allow them to live. However, by allowing them to live then we would be allowing major injustice and in some sense we seem to be "collaborating with evil (Shafer-Landau 149)". Reading about the brutality that this young woman had to go through, I feel obligated to say that we must definitely take the exemplary position and kill the rapists in order to make an example out of them to prevent similar situations from occurring.
Shafer-Landau, Russ. The Fundamentals of Ethics. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.
Press, Associated. "New Delhi Gang-rapist: She Shouldn't Have Fought Back." USA Today. Gannett, 03 Mar. 2015. Web. 06 Mar. 2015. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/03/new-delhi-rapist/24302553/>.
Mosbergen, Dominique. "Delhi Bus Gang Rape Victim Has Intestines Removed As Shocking Details Of Assault Emerge." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Dec. 2012. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/delhi-bus-gang-rape-victim-intestines-shocking-details_n_2340721.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.