The bru­tal De­cem­ber 16 gang-rape and beat­ing of a 23-year-old med­ical stu­dent in New Del­hi gal­vanised con­cern through­out In­dia and the world about the polic­ing and the pros­e­cu­tion of sex­u­al vi­o­lence in gen­er­al en­dured by women, and the crime of rape in par­tic­u­lar.

Ear­li­er this week, the New Del­hi au­thor­i­ties charged five men with the woman's rape and mur­der and were hold­ing a sixth sus­pect, be­lieved to be a ju­ve­nile, in cus­tody. A hear­ing is sched­uled for to­day and, ac­cord­ing to the re­ports from In­dia, jus­tice for the ac­cused is go­ing to be swift, as a ver­dict is ex­pect­ed in weeks.

The bare-bones facts of this tru­ly hor­ren­dous case demon­strate the way a car­ing democ­ra­cy is able to take de­ci­sions in the in­ter­est of pre­serv­ing the dig­ni­ty of the per­son and the sys­tem of jus­tice: keep­ing the vic­tim anony­mous, even in death; en­sur­ing that she got the best pos­si­ble treat­ment re­gard­less of the cost and the place­ment of this case on a fast track so that the vic­tim's fam­i­ly and friends can be as­sured that jus­tice will be served.

On New Year's Day, in the wake of the bru­tal­i­ty in New Del­hi, the T&T po­lice ser­vice re­leased crime sta­tis­tics for 2012, which showed that the num­ber of sex­u­al of­fences re­port­ed to the po­lice last year had in­creased by 44 per cent over 2011 and by 123 per cent over 2010.

These sta­tis­tics alone in­di­cate that T&T has a se­ri­ous prob­lem of sex­u­al vi­o­lence-a prob­lem that re­quires a swift, pos­i­tive re­sponse from the po­lice, the ju­di­cia­ry, the pol­i­cy­mak­ers with­in the Gov­ern­ment, schools, church­es and NGOs.

The first as­pect of such a re­sponse is to ac­knowl­edge that the coun­try has a prob­lem of sex­u­al vi­o­lence and that the prob­lem is wors­en­ing. In­stead, what the coun­try got was the pa­thet­ic sight of one of the high­est-rank­ing of­fi­cers, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mervyn Richard­son, sug­gest­ing that the in­crease in re­ports of sex crimes was due to young girls hav­ing "af­fairs" and peo­ple trust­ing the po­lice enough to re­port more of­fences.

Mr Richard­son said there are not "rapists abound­ing" and "we want to pro­tect our fe­males. We love them." The re­marks were in­ap­pro­pri­ate, in­sen­si­tive, in­ac­cu­rate and of­fen­sive and raise ques­tions about whether T&T po­lice of­fi­cers are trained well enough-or at all-to han­dle sex­u­al of­fences. Has DCP Richard­son had any such train­ing? Has he read about the rape con­tro­ver­sy go­ing on in In­dia??

His com­ments are not in line with in­ter­na­tion­al find­ings about the pro­por­tion of sex of­fences that are re­port­ed. DCP Richard­son's com­ment dis­play a dis­turb­ing de­gree of ig­no­rance and his pa­tro­n­is­ing stance about pro­tect­ing "our fe­males" do not help. T&T al­ready faces a sit­u­a­tion where ig­no­rance and gen­der bias ham­per ef­forts to ad­dress sex­u­al vi­o­lence.

To hear these un­for­tu­nate re­marks from a very se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer show the ex­tent of the prob­lem and the ur­gent need to raise aware­ness. As in In­dia, T&T needs tougher laws against sex­u­al vi­o­lence-which is by no means on­ly suf­fered by women-and re­forms to a po­lice cul­ture that of­ten blames rape vic­tims and re­fus­es to file charges against ac­cused at­tack­ers.

The on­ly way that the cul­ture is go­ing to change is if there is con­tin­u­ous train­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers and the en­force­ment of this mes­sage by those at the top of the law-en­force­ment hi­er­ar­chy. The re­cruit­ment of more spe­cial­ly trained fe­male po­lice of­fi­cers and their place­ment in all of the po­lice dis­tricts would al­so go a long way to chang­ing the pre­vail­ing cul­ture.

The ju­di­cia­ry al­so needs to give se­ri­ous thought to how rape cas­es can be ex­pe­dit­ed so that the vic­tims do not have to re­turn to court again and again to face their at­tack­ers. And the so­ci­ety needs to adopt a ze­ro-tol­er­ance at­ti­tude to sex­u­al vi­o­lence against women and mi­nors, as there is clear and com­pelling ev­i­dence of the dam­age that can be be­queathed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion by such acts.