Where did you store that one-liner? You do remember it, don’t you? A couple of days ago, when Yahoo’s main page popped up on your screen, it was right there, the second news headline from the top.
I instinctively turned it into a ratio: Forty-eight women every hour is approximately 1 every 72 seconds...
What I didn’t do was click on the link to read on. I realize that I should have and if only in order to fully acknowledge both the horror of this ongoing atrocity and the researchers’ effort to reach our awareness.
But I was afraid. Afraid of the rage that would surge in me while reading details of the study that puts a cold number to the brutal fact of humanity.
Forty-eight women and girls in Congo are raped every hour, 24/7.
There it was. Information readily available to be locked away in a dark corner of our human experience. A truth to be ignored.
A few years ago a study done by a couple of US professors concluded that rape is not unnatural among human males. The study came under a lot of criticism and after a while I lost track of whether the public and academic outcry was about the sober conclusion, or whether it showed our inability to accept another truth or two.
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