Drunks raping women at HIV/AIDS refuge in Papua New Guinea western highlands

[Poll_Blind]

Please carefully consider the following:

From News.com.au:

DRUNKEN rapists are attacking women at an HIV/AIDS refuge in Papua New Guinea in "suicide" attacks, an AIDS counselling authority says.

Reports published in PNG's Post Courier newspaper have highlighted a spate of abuses, intimidation and rapes of women known to be infected with HIV/AIDS in Mt Hagen, in Western Highlands Province.

A donated house in the town has become a refuge for 13 women using antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV/AIDS, but the women say they are constantly attacked by drunks and local men.

An unnamed woman, who was recently raped by a schoolboy, told the Post Courier that men were forcing their way into the refuge to rape regardless of the women's illness.

--snip--

"We are victims, feeding on antiretroviral drugs. We have no strength to defend such attacks," the woman said.

Reverend Apollos Yimbak, care and counselling coordinator for PNG's National AIDS Council Secretariat, confirmed the woman's story.

"Last Friday a grade 11 student from a Mt Hagen school went to the residence, broke in and raped a woman," he told AAP.

"The woman told him she had AIDS and to wear a condom, but he refused," he said.

"It's a disturbing story, it's a suicide, but the positive side is that the woman tried to offer a safe alternative, to negotiate.

"Sadly he refused, which highlights how people behave when under the influence," he said.

If I read anything which strikes me quite like this story did in the next year I'll be surprised. I mean, think about it. You have this woman, weak and sick, suffering from both the effects and treatment of AIDS. It's dark, she hears someone breaking in. It's a boy, drunk and devilish. And devilish is a pale word to describe what he has in mind: To rape this sick, helpless woman- to destroy what remains of her dignity and strength, physically attack her, leave her in a soiled bed which she will be too weak to get up from.

And that is the very kindest way I can put it.

And for her to realize these things, to know she will be unable to fight him off, protect herself from the rape, the bruises and maybe the beating. And for her to realize that in perpetrating this heinous crime against her he will, likely, pay with his life as he contracts the deadly virus she has...

In that moment, when she is reported to have urged him to wear a condom I could not help but think that in that room there were two human beings- one representing the absolute worst, selfish, violent, and self-destructive urges of humanity and the other, a selfless altruism representing compassion extending far beyond what we normally think of as even the extremities of forgiveness...something extending into the biblical.

If it were fiction I would never even entertain the possibility that it was believable. In this world there are, every day, every hour, scenes which play out which teach us lessons about humanity, the worst and the best of it, beyond words.

PB

[redqueen]

1. I've read that men are far less likely to contract the disease from women...

then women are from men. Just adds insult to injury.