South African doctor Sonnet Ehlers has invented a special condom, called Rape-aXe, to protect South African women from being raped. The Rape-aXe will be distributed to women for free ahead of the football World Cup in South Africa.
Ehlers remembers the eyes of a 20 year old rape victim she met at a hospital in the Northern Cape of South Africa 40 years ago. Her eyes were "totally dead," she said. But what Ehlers remembers most are the victim's words:
"If I only had teeth down there," which inspired Ehlers to do something for victims. Ehlers first developed the special condom five years ago and says it is now ready for widespread use.
The Rape-aXe, is a condom women can insert themselves.
Rows of jagged plastic hooks line the inside of the tube - bent backward like teeth in a shark's mouth - and lodge in a perpetrator's penis upon entry. Dr Ehlers emphasizes that they do not draw blood.
However, they do cause a great deal of pain if the man tries to remove the condom. The condom has to be removed in hospital, she says, which means the rapist can immediately be arrested.
The anti-rape condom is not yet available in the shops in South Africa,but Ehlers wants to distribute 30,000 free anti-rape condoms for women ahead of the football World Cup.
After that, this anti-rape condom will be sold at no more than $2 each.
Critics argue that the Rape-aXe could work as a provocation and the rapist is likely to become more violent when he realises he has been trapped.
Ehlers is from South Africa, dubbed the
'rape capital of the world,' where a rape reportedly occurs
every 17 seconds and only 8 percent of violators are convicted in 2006, with one fourth of the men in South Africa having raped women in 2006.
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