It was love, they called it rape: Ethnographic Study on Statutory rape

• In Event: Addressing Gender and Sexual Victimization

Abstract

The paper analyse statutory rape in cases of runaway marriages of minor and contest the construction of these categories as ‘rape.’ By increasing the age of consent from 16 to 18 years in the child sexual abuse law, the paper will focus on troubling developments of courts to adjudicate on love, romance and elopement. Siddiqui, 2012 suggested that rape complaints in elopement cases are filed because 'it is less dishonourable to claim to be a victim of rape than to admit to consensual sex.' Women in such cases become persona non- grata both for her native as well as in-laws family causing severe distress to her psychological as well as economic stability. By construction of elopement cases as ‘rape’, the retributive process have increased the family control on adolescents’ sexuality. The study refer to the ethnographic account of the victim and their family members and highlights the importance of restorative processes in dealing with the cases of statutory rape cases. By centering the discourse on ‘honour’, ‘bodily autonomy’, ‘agency’, it poses a serious challenge of feminist movement in recognizing rape as violence, transgression of body integrity and subjectivity and not just a property violation.

Author

• Garima Jain, O.P. Jindal Global University