The New York Times published:

A Hindu priest tricked a teenage parishioner into having sex with him...

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Hindu priest raped teen parishioner Responded to by Jennifer Pass

Dear Editor,

I would like to commend both Mr. Hays for writing the article, 'Prosecutors: Hindu priest raped teen parishioner' and Newsday for printing it.  77% of completed rapes are committed by non-strangers (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997), however, they often do not receive the coverage that sexual assaults involving strangers do, which furthers the myth that only strangers commit 'real' rapes.

The article, however, does perpetuate the idea that rape is a sexual act, as opposed to an act of violence.  Language such as ìtrick, having sex,î and ìconvincingî place emphasis and responsibility on the victim, implying that her intelligence is being questioned and that she possibly even gave consent for this act of violence.  Additionally, it is stated twice in this article that the younger sister was 'fondled' without clarifying that this is sexual abuse, which minimizes the egregiousness of this violation as well as its life altering impact.  Finally, although the phrase ìtook advantage of the youngsters and their trust in him by robbing them of their innocenceî and the word ìluredî are used to place some emphasis on the responsibility of the priest, there was a lack of contextual information about the well-known tactics of predators, and how victims are groomed and manipulated.  In this case, for example, it seems that the perpetrator used personal information of familial problems, along with his role as an authority figure to sexually abuse children.

In the future, providing statistics and/or additional information about child sexual abusers would help to show that this is, in fact, a very common crime.

Jennifer Pass.