This is Millicent Gaika. She is a 30-year-old South African woman who was tied up, beaten, strangled, tortured and raped for five hours.
Why was she battered and rape? She is victim of a practice called corrective rape, a term that describes the process of men raping women who claim to be lesbians until they have been turned straight. Such a practice is particularly popular in South Africa, and of course, homosexuality cannot be ‘cured,’ and Millicent is not the first woman who was victimized. The most vicious form of torture a woman can experience in South Africa for being a lesbian is having her genitals mutliated by sharp objects. 24 out of 25 men who are accused of doing such crimes walk free. More than 500 corrective rapes are reported each year, and more than 30 South African lesbians have been murdered because of their sexuality over the past decade.
There is a petition that is aiming to expose these crimes in South Africa. The mission is to get police to be more responsive to the corrective rapes and charge reasonable fines to the men performing these rapes. Sign the petition here. It only takes a name and an address. That’s all. Please sign it.
And I’m not usually the person to say it, but please reblog this. Please get the message out there that this is happening out there in the world. Please.
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