Korean girl still to be cared for by family of rapists
Here's the story in its entirety from The Korea Times, the only English-language, non-blogger source I could find for it:
Court Ruling on Rapists Draws AngerEnglish-language bloggers in South Korea have been passing this story around for a week now, mostly discussing their outrage at how bad the Korean justice system is at punishing sexual assault. This is juxtaposed against another news story of Korean prosecutors demanding a famous actress be jailed for 18 months for adultery, though bloggers are focusing little on the disability aspect and more on the sexual politics of the Korean judicial system and Korean culture. Disability, in the English-language analyses of this news, is mostly invisible. It's not clear to me how it rates in importance among Korean citizens.
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
A court handed down suspended jail terms to four family members who repeatedly raped a teenage relative who suffered from an intellectual disability.
The Cheongju District Court Thursday sentenced an 87-year-old grandfather and two uncles of a 16-year-old girl to four-year suspended prison terms for sexually assaulting and raping the girl for the last seven years. Another uncle received a three-year suspended jail term.
The court acknowledged that their crime was ``sinful'' as they used the young girl, who is their family member, to satisfy their sexual desires. But it gave the suspended terms, saying, ``The accused have fostered the girl in her parents' place. Considering her disability, she will also need their care and help in living in the future.''
The court added it took the accused people's old age and illness into consideration.
Citizens strongly denounced the ruling, saying the punishments were too lenient for the grave crime. Internet users said it is absurd to release them to ``take care of her,'' as she needs help from others, not from rapists. They also said those committing such a crime do not deserve consideration regarding old age or illnesses.
Some bloggers are collecting signatures to oust the judge who made the ruling. The prosecution also decided to appeal. ``One of them even has a previous conviction for rape but was given a suspended term. The ruling is unacceptable,'' a prosecutor said.
h/t Feministing
3 comments:
Thanks for the link.
I don't know how much you follow Korean news, but this story was a much bigger deal among foreign commentors than it was among Koreans. Outside that Korea Times story, and the dozens of blogs that picked it up, there was no English-language coverage. Even though we sent the story around as much as possible, nobody except local bloggers picked it up. It didn't even rank among the most-viewed stories in the Korean news; stories like the Mumbai attack and the adultery case pushed everything else down, although you think a story like this would be a bigger deal.
I have nothing but anecdotal evidence for this next point---it'd take a lot of digging through Korean-language media to find articles---but this type of abuse of the disabled isn't uncommon. When I showed the news to my Korean coworker the next thing she said after "oh my God" is "that's not new." Other coworkers said the same thing, and said they had heard stories like this before.
I've lived in rural South Korea, and attitudes toward the handicapped are improving: there have been some efforts to make places wheelchair-friendly, variously-abled students are incorporated into public schools, each region has its own schools set up for special needs students, and there is legislation on the books to make sure they get hired. However, rural areas are often off the grid, where quote-unquote authorities have no jurisdiction. This is increasingly so if the children are in orphanages, which happens a lot.
You're right that many people focused on the sexuality angle. The fact that you get a free pass for visiting a prostitute, but get 18 months for adultery was a big eye-roller. And because the adultery case came out a few days after this rape one did, it was natural that people juxtaposed them. The disability angle is but one huge WTF in a case full of them, and I'm completely shocked that the story hasn't gotten more attention than it has. Thanks for picking it up and for spreading it around.
Thanks for posting this -- I'm utterly astounded that I hadn't heard a word about this until your post (living in the US -- not unusual for mass media here to miss atrocities in the rest of the world, but I get my news from a variety of non-US sources as well, mostly in English). I'll be doing what I can to spread the word. The girl's family members deserve punishment far beyond the non-sentence they received, and growing awareness of this story just might do something to begin to change the pattern of abuse of the disabled that Brian referenced.
I think part of the problem in Korea is that sexual assult just isn't yet taken seriously. Neither is child abuse or spousal abuse. These things are considerably more tolerated here than they are back home.
As for a knowledge of disability issues - over the past four years, I'd say I've been slowly seeing more disabled children out and about with their families - that's huge, as before I understand that the standard response to disabled children was institutions. And Korea is slowly becoming a bit more accessible, though on the whole it really isn't.
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