Hmmm, I do not know one country ( society…) being “more dangerous” than another ( then, of course there is Island…. I adore those guys, they have it figured out). I have found danger to be a very relative thing and, in general, one can get hurt really bad in a “safe” enviroment ( probably a lot of people do) and have a tremendous time and be utterly safe in the most “dangerous” places on the planet… I know of a whole lot of cases of individuals moving through some hellish places unscathed just to end up horribly hurt or killed someplace that is considered “completely safe”
As you so nicely stated, it all depends on the context.
And so does justice it seems… That mother should be rewarded and cited as an example of the right hing to do ( sorry, but I do not know of any parent that could restrain themselves in a situation like that). Besides, I am not much of a lawyer, but I believe that the principle of self-defense is applicable there, although it was her daughter being attacked.
“And a mother who burned her daughter rapist was put to jail when she found him breaking the protection order in a permit for more years than he was.”.. WTF????!!!!! — BTW- where are you from?- Again- which parent would not react the same way in such a situation… It wasn’t even something that “might” happen- the guy was already convicted for raping the girl.
( this makes me think — you know, the Germans are on the right track with the chemical castration thing of rapists… Only I would start applying it even to the first time offenders… if it can be proven without any space for doubt, of course. )
Although the laws, ( on the books) say one thing, most likely , down here, these women would have never had to answer for what they did. OR, in the worst case, they would have had a short trial and let go as innocent..
I think it stems from the fact that some of the wounds are still fresh, and we had an insane scale of rapes during the war. Something like 5 to 7% of women aged 15 to 50 were raped by the Serbian forces… In translation it means that almost everyone is related, or knows someone that has been raped in that period.
And, as you can imagine, the level of violence and ugliness, even when it comes to rape, multiplies when you are dealing with a war of annihilation in which the superior opponent looks at the native population as, sort of, sub-human- And knows there not only will there be no consequences, but that he might even get rewarded for his actions. ALl this time later, with all the existing evidence, in some cases even video or photographic material. With at least a partial list of perpetrators, and despite the endless requests by both our government and the international community, not one of them faced trial- in fact, Belgrade denies it ever happened. ( Yet again, Belgrade denies that Srebrenica happened….)
Sometime in 2006 I spent about three months collecting testimonies from the victims and their families… And although I knew very well what was happening ( I spent a large part of that period reporting from the field) what those women had to tell simply made me sick. The stories themselves could be traumatizing for the one listening- and I can not imagine what it felt like to tell them. I heard and documented dozens of testimonies and even after everything- all the time, and all the other ugly places and situations I have seen, some of the testimonies are firmly burned into my memory and they still make me shiver…
OK.. I strayed reallyyy far from the main subject…
It is all a pretty ugly subject, but necessary. And laws or mo laws, women ( in fact every human being) should have both the right and the ability to protect her/him self. Since, at the end of the day, it seems that the only way one can be (relatively) safe is to be able to cause more harm to an eventual attacker than the attacker can cause upon the ( potential) victim.