Every month, news of yet another rape case appears on social media, a sad reminder of how widespread sexual violence has become. Countless survivors without internet access endure their suffering in silence, without getting justice.
Reports from all around the world show an increase in young boys being perpetrators of violent sex crimes. Recently, criminal justice debates have been met with suggestions of prison rehabilitation as a corrective measure for violators.
Certain advocates of the prison rehabilitation of these rapists argue that children are groomed into committing such acts. Therefore, they believe killing or incarceration is not the solution; instead, offenders should undergo a series of therapeutic interventions aimed at behavioral change.
Research led by R. Karl Hanson (2002) found that sexual offenders who received rehabilitation and treatment still had a reoffending rate of about 12%, compared with 17% for untreated offenders. Similarly, a study of a cognitive-behavioral therapy program for male sex offenders found no clear reduction in reoffending, particularly among repeat offenders, whose established patterns of behavior are difficult to break.
Grooming indeed exists. Children or teenagers can be influenced or manipulated by adults, peers, or social environments to adopt certain harmful behaviors. However, research shows that by around age 12-14, adolescents already possess a strong sense of right and wrong, and can recognize that actions like hurting, coercing, or violating someone are inherently wrong.
In Nigeria, the case of Ochanya Elizabeth Ogbanje still haunts public memory: the 13-year-old girl was repeatedly raped from age 8 by her guardian’s husband and his son in Benue State, endured years of abuse that destroyed her health, and died in 2018 after the trauma became fatal. The culprits have not been brought to book till today.
Across the world, most crimes are met with clear and equal punishment. Yet when it comes to rape, punishment is often followed by debate and opposition. The reason is simple: rape is still not widely seen as a serious crime.
Rape is often treated casually, and a woman’s body is still too frequently seen as a man’s property. This belief is one reason marital rape is often dismissed as a crime, rooted in the assumption that a husband owns his wife’s body. It also explains why men’s sexual desires are often framed as urgent needs that must be satisfied.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports that the percentage of women who were victims of rape rose from 48% in 2021 to 65% in 2022, a figure that continues to grow in a country where comprehensive documentation of such crimes remains scarce. Similarly, the National Human Rights Commission recorded 45,986 cases of sexual violence in 2024 alone, including 6,943 cases of rape, further highlighting the scale of the crisis.
Within this culture of entitlement, some men even argue that rape should not be treated as a crime, claiming that sex, regardless of consent, is enjoyable and that women secretly like it. In this worldview, men see themselves as a prize, entitled to enter women’s spaces and bodies at will.
This culture of disbelief is reinforced by the persistent myth that many rape accusations are false, despite research showing otherwise. A 2010 peer-reviewed study found that only 5.9% of sexual assault reports were false, with some studies placing the figure as low as 2%, meaning the overwhelming majority of survivors report real harm.
Popular culture also plays a role in how rape is seen, often making it seem less serious across different forms of art. In music, vulgar and degrading words are often used to describe women, reducing them to sexual objects and stripping away their dignity. In movies and television, harassment is sometimes shown as love, where a man refusing to take “no” is seen as passion instead of a problem. In comedy skits and online content, sexual assault and consent are turned into jokes, which makes people take them less seriously.
Each time rape is debated rather than condemned, its gravity is slowly diluted. What should be recognized as a violent crime becomes reduced to a topic of argument, something to justify, reinterpret, or excuse. Over time, this constant watering down reshapes public perception, making rape seem less like an act of violence and more like an unfortunate but normal part of life.
Rape is a gruesome act, a violent theft of both a person’s body and innocence; under no circumstance should it be treated casually. Rapists must be confronted with the full weight of the law and held accountable for their actions, because justice for survivors and the protection of others must always come before sympathy for those who choose to violate another human being.
