Rapes of women with MR diagnosis rising in Korea

From Korea Times:

The number of sexual assaults on women with mental retardation is increasing at an alarming pace. Human rights activists are calling for stiffer punishment for the attackers.

Officers at the Gyeongbuk Metropolitan Police Station recently apprehended two men for separate cases of rape on mentally retarded teenagers.

According to the investigators, an unidentified 41-year-old man raped a 15-year-old school girl, who was a relative of his wife and had stayed at his place to attend a special school, for over three years. The girl was only 10 when he first started the abuse.

Another 56-year-old man enticed a 15-year-old girl near a church yard by offering her some biscuits. He coerced her into his car and raped her. He also threatened to tell her parents.

“While society is getting stricter on pedophiles, we are still less aware of mentally challenged people. We need to be on special alert,” said Lee Soo-yong, an officer at the station.

The two cases are just the tip of the iceberg as there are crimes of this kind reported in the nation nearly every day.

The number of cases reported to the Women with Disabilities Empathy for counseling jumped from 510 in 2008 to 838 in 2009 and 570 in the first half of 2010.

The number is expected to easily surpass 1,000 this year. Of the 570 cases, 63 percent were against mentally disabled women.

Women’s rights activists point out that the current system allows a loophole to offenders against mentally-vulnerable women.

Under the law, sexual attackers of disabled people receive additional punishment. However, the court often shows leniency to rapists of mentally challenged people since “mental disabilities are hard to verify.”

“You need to have a government-authorized grading system to be acknowledged as a person with a disability. In court, she needs to prove her retardation through various performance and other screening processes. Also, one needs to prove that she had ‘strived hard to resist’ the crime, in order to get the incident acknowledged as a rape case,” said Hwang Ji-sung, consultant at the disabled women’s rights group.

“But these mentally retarded women have a hard time expressing either of these things. In the end, in most cases, judges do not confirm their mental status and impose no heavier punishment on the offender.”

Hwang said relevant groups are preparing to protest the system. “We are planning a press conference to raise public awareness on the issue and will hold signature collection campaigns to lobby experts. We believe mental retardation should be protected and respected as with any other disabilities,” she said.