Experts say rapes can be engineered
JAKARTA (JP): Medical experts agreed at a meeting on Friday that rapes were usually not sexually motivated and could be engineered by an organized group.
"Sex is not the primary factor in rape, particularly in mass rapes," Wimpie Pangkahila, an andrology and sexology expert, said, adding that known rape victims have been recorded to be as young as 5 months and as old as 90 years.
"And it can spontaneously happen under conducive conditions, or it can be engineered by a group with certain motives."
In most rape cases, "expression of power or anger is more dominant, while sexual urge is secondary", he said.
Wimpie presented a study, Mass Rapes: a Bio-medical Review, at a public dialog held by the Civil Society on Violence against Women. Other speakers were noted psychiatrist Dadang Hawari and sexologist Naek L. Tobing.
Wimpie, a lecturer at Udayana University in Bali, defined rape as a pseudo-sexual act "which is more related to status, aggression, control and domination, rather than pleasure or sexual satisfaction."
Some drugs can stimulate people's aggressive sexual behavior as well, he said, refusing to identify the drugs because of medical ethics.
Dadang, a former president of the Indonesian Psychiatric Association, noted that people committing rape during the May riots in Jakarta and other cities in the country could possibly have been under the influence of certain drugs.
"Under certain medicines, people act like robots. They do whatever they are told to do, including saying Allahu Akbar (God is Great) before raping," Dadang said, referring to controversial reports of a victim quoting her rapists.
There could have been parties, he argued, who intended to discredit Moslems by victimizing Chinese-Indonesians.
Dadang cited a statement by activist Yeni Rosa Damayanti, who had told the forum that she had recently gained information of civilians trained to instigate riots in East Timor.
Mass rapes occur in war or war-like situations, Dadang said, adding that while he believed the reports of mass rapes during the May riots, the scale could not have been like that in Bosnia, for instance.
What happened in May, he said, "was created to look like a war zone."
In his paper, Wimpie cited the occurrence of mass rapes in several countries, all in war situations.
The experts expressed concern about authorities' statements denying the reported rapes during the May riots. Dadang demanded that officials should instead ensure the safety of the victims and all parties linked to the investigation.
The experts said the police's approach in its rape investigations had ignored the psychological impacts the victims were suffering. They, however, echoed earlier concerns voiced by members of the government-appointed fact-finding team investigating the riots on the need of evidence.
Wimpie said it was hard to prove rape given the definition of the crime in the Criminal Code.
The definition stipulates violent penetration, implying that sperm is needed as evidence. He said, however, that sperm was not always present in victims.
"The absence of sperm could be caused by premature or interrupted ejaculation. And it is possible that rape happens without penetration," he said. Dadang urged the law be amended to provide a clearer definition of rape.
A source requiring anonymity told the forum of threats to doctors dealing with victims. He said the harassment, which included death threats, were targeted at doctors' families and the rape victims. (01)