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OKSANA LUKASZEWYCZ-POLON TRIBUTE TO MOTHERHOOD M other and C h ild — a rtis t Oksana Lukashevych-P olon. М а т и й д и т и н а . — О ф о р т . Оксана Л укаш е вич-П опо н Majestic spirals of my mind Soaring, reaching the unknown Flaring, bubbling thoughts disperse. Through windows open to the world A glimpse of imagery evolves...matures, Ripens into rays of the sunken golden sun. I reach to feel the essence... Presence of a being distinct from those Of my associates before. Mirage...Mirage...I shout, run.. scattering images in the crystals of glistening sand, And fall upon an oasis of love... Where the tumults of lifes' discords Are harmonized in swift and timeless tunes. Universal thoughts of days to come arise. A spirit born within is free, Has left its cave, its inner self, My wanderings have ceased, a soul lies bare, Exposed to elements it craved. Enriched by fruits of rapture it once knew. Rich vision! Pass quickly in final tribute of hereafter... the defendent taken into custody, tried and convicted of forcible rape. In Philadelphia, the fourth largest city in the United States, 796 cases of rape were reported for the year 1974; only 88 men were convicted for the crime. Significant adjustments in these already incredibly low figures must be made. According to a University of Pennsylvania Law Review study, the number of rapes reported represents only about 50% of the number of complaints the police and other authorities receive. The police "unfound" about 50% of all charges made. For one reason or another they simply decide not to register the complaint and not to investigate the charges. It is thus not surprising that nine out of ten rape victims do not press charges at all. When this fact is taken under consideration, it becomes apparent that approximately one rapist in two hundred is arrested, tried and convicted for the crime of forcible rape. Recent studies have shown that certainty of punishment significantly deters crime. In the case of rape, one may logically conclude that certainty of not being punished significantly contributed to the rise in crime. On the basis of these statistics one must further deduce that the law protects, in this particular area, the offender rather than the victim. The root causes of the anti victim bias intstitutionalized into the laws are in large part historical and cultural. In ancient societies the first laws against the crime of rape were instituted to protect the property rights of the father or the husband of the victim, not the woman herself. For example, the law viewed only virgins as possible victims of rape; the offender was required to pay a fine to the father in a sum equal to the girl's value on the marriage market. A married woman victimized by a rapist was considered guilty of the same crime as her assailant; both were usually stoned to death or senten ced to death by drowning for the crime of adultery. A milder version of this unjust law granted the victim's husband the right to rape the offender's wife; the princ iple of an-eye-for-an-eye was here applied with total disregard for the injured party. Underpinning the ancient statutes governing cases of rape was the att itude that women tended to be, by nature, inveterate liars and storytellers. Greater attention was focused on the probability of false accusation than on the possibility of justified charges. While legal thinking and jurisprudence evolved to a substantially more humanistic position by the 13th century and rape was finally considered a threat to public safety and a criminal felony many prejudicial and unjust features of the ancient laws found their way into modern legislation. The most blatant vestiges of age-old inequities are to be found in the special rules of evidence peculiar to the laws governing forcible rape. These rules embody an extraordinary safeguard under НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ, ТРАВЕНЬ, 1976 23
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