Justice Delayed, Justice Denied: Do Courts Empower Traffickers?

Procedural lapses in the court of law empowers the traffickers more than their victims, writes Uma Chatterjee.

Is the delay in justice to be blamed for the psychological trauma of the victims of trafficking? (Photo: iStock)

Whenever I have asked victims of sex trafficking about punishing their traffickers, and why they want the perpetrators to be punished, in the beginning, very emphatically, they have always come up with two reasons:

1. To make the person suffer or to get the person to take seriously his/her crime and truly understand and realise that what he/she did was wrong.

And,

2. To deter the same person repeating the offence and/or to deter others from committing the same offence.

After they go through counselling, sometimes psychiatric care and therapeutic sessions, they also add emotionally:

As a victim of a crime, I feel the punishment should also depend much on me, not only the law, the trial. I face the person who raped me, sold me for money and left me almost dead, and then I realise there is absolutely no remorse. Not only at the time of final trial, but at each court hearing, in the village chowk, at a mela, in my neighbourhood or even in my house… I have been there, standing up to fight to ensure for a reasonable/just outcome among all the delays, corruption, where lawyers somehow get the traffickers near to nil sentences and I am left to deal with the aftermath, the crap… And you realise there really was no justice, it was all in vain.

Inappropriate questions during trial compel the victim to relive the horrors of the traumatic incident. (Photo: iStock)

Ignoring the Minutia

Psychological studies and research has shown that traumatic experiences like sexual violence and rape, that are integral parts of trafficking, are often encoded in fragmented ways in the brain, making it so that victims cannot recall their assault in a clear, linear manner, often focusing on minutia (such as the perpetrator’s smell) that may seem insignificant to law enforcement. This can lead to discrepancies in victims’ stories, as they’re not able to recall everything perfectly, causing officers to be suspicious about their entire report. Based on these “imperfect reportings”, the trafficker wins… and the victim loses.

The dialogue of the law enforcement with the victim starts, many times, with questions like:

“What if you are lying?”
“Didn’t you elope with your lover? So now why are you crying?”

“It seems clear that you were driven by greed, not any real need… So now why this reporting?”

“Who can give evidence or witness to what you are saying? I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened. Why should I believe you?”

Right now, the single thing that keeps victims silent is the fear that they won’t be believed and will be blamed.

Allowing the Traffickers to Go Unpunished

When you believe the accused and not the victim, you are reinforcing their (perpetrator’s) belief that they can behave badly, whether that is covert abuse and exploitation or sexual assault and rape and human trafficking. You are renewing their social license to continue and endorsing the idea that they are free to do with women what they please. We give them a silent yet palpable permission to continue to misuse, mistreat and molest their fellow humans.

When traffickers go unpunished, the clear message to victims is:

• That we don’t trust your intellect or judgement or basic intelligence.
  
• That if you aren’t reporting in a very clear-cut, easy to digest and otherwise understandable manner, you weren’t violated at all.
  
• That our truth is more important than yours.
  
• When we don’t believe trafficked victims, we create more of them. When we don’t punish traffickers, we create more of them.
  
• “This.” “Happened to you.” “If you wouldn’t have been there or willing to go.” Dismissive, fault-finding, victim-blaming.
  

These words have an impact. I have watched girls and young women in West Bengal committing/trying to commit suicide and living with the toll of extreme stigma and shame. Women are literally dying from blame and shame. And as Gloria Steinem says, “…the “honour” of some men, families, and cultures is written on the body of a female.”

Punishment of the trafficker and restorative justice is intended to restore the victim’s self-esteem, which may have been shattered by the victimisation. (Photo: iStock)

Also Read: Ambiguous Definitions Steal the Sting from Anti-Trafficking Bill

Power Inequality at Play

Through the crime of trafficking, power inequality has been established by the perpetrator’s action against the victim’s will – the power of the trafficker to cheat, lure, sell, coerce, exploit. Punishment and reparation is intended to re-equilibrate power. So non-punishment then reiterates powerlessness, hopelessness in the victim once again.

Second, unpunished crime and impunity of traffickers tell the victims that the perpetrator somehow profits from his wrong-doing and then comes out better than they do. And the victim then fails to understand how she should re-equilibrate the gains and losses caused by the violence, the fraud, and the cheating.

Third, punishment of the trafficker and restorative justice is intended to restore the victim’s self-esteem, which may have been shattered by the victimisation. Through disclosure of the crime and reporting it, there is some escape from psychological pain and one can present oneself as a strong person who does not tolerate unjust treatment by others. But if the system then is not able to serve justice on time and aimed at repairing the harm, then this self-esteem is forever trodden. The victim is blamed and effectively silenced.

Many of my lawyer friends say that “Innocent until proven guilty is a critical foundation of our legal system and hence law takes time and is cautious. What if an innocent gets punished wrongfully?” they ask. I agree.

“But does it have to be the starting point for a successful/dedicated investigation?” I ask.

What if our public leaders and the police and the lawyers and the judges believed survivors more often than not, I ask?

And what if all the millions of trafficked survivors stood up together and said “I was trafficked, sold and raped”, would the victim blaming and shaming by individuals and the system finally come to an end?

(The writer is a psychologist by profession. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)