Kind of OT, but this is amazing.
Anti-rape device stirs controversy
By Robyn Dixon
Los Angeles Times
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A medieval device built on hatred of men? Or a cheap, easy-to-use invention that could free millions of South African women from fear of rape in a country with the worst sexual-assault record on Earth?
Dubbed the "rape trap," trademarked "Rapex," the condomlike device bristling with internal hooks designed to snare rapists has reignited controversy over the nation's alarming rape rate, even before it was launched officially in South Africa's Western Cape yesterday.
Some say the inventor, Sonette Ehlers, 57, deserves a medal, others, that she needs help.
The device, which is worn like a tampon, hooks onto a rapist during penetration and must be surgically removed from the assailant.
Ehlers, a former medical technician, said the rape trap would be so painful for a rapist that it would disable him immediately, enabling his victim to escape; but she insisted it would cause no long-term physical damage to the assailant and could not accidentally injure the woman.
Some women's activists call the device regressive, putting the onus on individual women to address a societal, male problem. Charlene Smith, a journalist and anti-rape campaigner, said the device "goes back to the concept of chastity belts" and predicted it would incite injured rapists to kill their victims.
"You will get a higher rate of women being killed," Smith said. "We don't need these nut-case devices by people hoping to make a lot of money out of other women's fear."
But Ehlers contends that South Africa's rape problem is so severe that women cannot just wait for male attitudes to improve with education. She said her company had received many inquiries from around the world in recent months, even though production is not expected to begin until next year.
"I don't hate men. I love men. I have not got revenge in mind. All I am doing is giving women their power back," said Ehlers, who exhibited a prototype yesterday in Kleinmond, a village about 60 miles east of Cape Town. "I don't even hate rapists. But I hate the deed with a passion."
Ehlers foresees women inserting the device as a vital part of a daily security routine that has come to include switching on the electric fence around the family home and activating the house alarm each night.
South Africa has the highest per-capita rate of reported rapes in the world: 119 per 100,000 people, according to the United Nations. That compares with 30 per 100,000 in the United States.
Police statistics show more than 50,000 rapes are reported every year, but analysts and women's-advocacy groups argue South Africa's total including unreported rapes could be five to nine times higher.
Ehlers sees her invention as particularly attractive to low-income black women, whom she says are more vulnerable to rape than middle-income women because they often walk long distances through unsafe areas to and from work.
The single-use disposable device would sell for about 15 cents and Ehlers plans to market it in packets of 10 at major supermarkets.
The device also reduces the chances of pregnancy and of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases from the attacker, Ehlers said.
South Africa has more people with HIV/AIDS than any other country, with one in nine of its 45 million population infected.
Ehlers said women had tried it for comfort and it had been tested on a plastic male model but not on a live man.
She said most of the 2,000 South African women her company surveyed said they were willing to use the device.
She expects production to begin next year, probably in Asia, because of lower production costs.
Material from Reuters is included in this report.
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