On Recapturing Rapists ...

Yudit, over in Yafo, wrote an interesting post about her views on the capture of escaped serial rapist, Benny Sela. I was going to comment on her post, but my comment got too long, so I decided to post it here instead (apologies, Yudit!).

One of the things I found distasteful about the whole affair was the way in which it sort of absolved everyone else. All of a sudden, the country is full of angels looking for that ultimate evil: Benny Sela - unkempt, unshaven and looking menacingly at us from billboards around the country. So long as he was a fugitive, no-one was safe. Now that he has been recaptured, everything is dandy.

I heard about the recapture by word-of-mouth. I saw the police congratulating themselves for finding someone who should never have gotten lost in the first place, late last night on tv.

So the police who caught him did a good job. You can't argue against that. Certainly, they did a much better job than the police who lost him two weeks ago to the day.

However, his recapture is nothing more than the rectification of a huge blunder. It is nothing short of simply what should have been done. There should be no parties involved, and there should be no self-congratulation. World order has not been restored.

And what is more, he's only one rapist. Yes, he had many victims, but he's hardly alone. There are, unfortunately, countless others - many of whom even operate within their own families, and many who will possibly never be caught.

In a country where the President is under serious investigation for rape, and the Justice Minister for sexual assault, we should not be so naive as to think that by recaputring one serial rapist, we have, in any way, solved a problem.