Sexual assault: Fight, on your own

Girls need to wake up to the fact that they can’t expect others to fight their battles. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and other fairytale princesses might have had princes coming to their rescue, but today’s woman needs to save herself.

The Tehelka journalist’s detailed letter to her managing editor Shoma Chaudhury, where she lists out how Tarun Tejpal attacked her in graphic detail and the “help” she got afterwards proves that only you can successfully fight your own battle.

After the poor girl was assaulted, she went crying to three male colleagues. And what did the guys do? They offered to resign with her to show their solidarity! How exactly does this help her? Would it not have been more helpful if they had taken her to the nearest police station to file a complaint or even approached Shoma themselves?

The victim says she didn’t approach Shoma immediately as the latter was very busy and had no time to spare, but surely everyone has time to listen to a colleague or employee who was attacked at a work event?

And talking about Shoma, you can normally find this lady fighting for women’s rights on any news channel debate. She was recently demanding the resignation of Ranjit Sinha, the CBI chief for his use of the inappropriate metaphor on enjoying rape. But when it came to her own colleague Tarun Tejpal, the lady decided that a simple apology should be sufficient.

The victim says she even rang her boyfriend, but since he wasn’t in the country he couldn’t immediately be with her.

Tejpal’s daughter, too, was not of great help. Yes, she believed her and confronted her father, but told the victim not to worry because though in all probability her career at Tehelka looked over, this was a bad phase that would pass! An assault, especially if it is sexual in nature, is mind-numbingly scary, but these are the times when you need to get your wits together.

The Mumbai photojournalist, who was gang-raped in a secluded mill, went through a more dreadful experience, but the girl had the presence of mind to go to the hospital and then to the police station to file a complaint to ensure she got justice. The poor Tehelka girl instead went about her job escorting Robert De Niro at the Think Fest and continued to put herself in danger. If only she had gone to the cops the day the attack happened, she would have spared herself the agony of being assaulted for the second time by Tejpal.

So ladies, don’t expect to win any battle if you are not prepared to fight it yourself.