WAS SHE ACTUALLY RAPED?

Sexual crimes are on the increase these days. Many times we are asked to examine girls and young women- both alive and dead- who have been sexually molested. The questions which the police wants to ask us are many. One of the questions which is invariably asked is whether the woman has been raped or not.

It might seem surprising to many here, why the police wants to ask this question. After all, if a woman is asserting that she has been raped then she must have been. Unfortunately this is not true in all cases. Many times women falsely accuse innocent men of having raped them. In such cases it becomes very important for medical personnel to thoroughly examine the victims and tell the police whether she has been raped or not.

To determine the answer to this question, the doctor relies very heavily on examination of female genitalia and it would be pertinent to have a quick review of the structures present there. Fig 1 shows the genitalia of a female who has recently had a sexual intercourse. On the top one can see the pubic hair and at the bottom is anus. In between are structures which are collectively known as vulva. Two main openings can be seen. The upper one is urethra through which urine come out. The lower one is the vaginal opening. Intercourse takes place through this opening. Menstrual blood comes out of this opening too. Both these openings are covered by two very thick fleshy lips called labium majus. Clitoris, a very sensitive, pea sized organ lies at the top, between the folds of the labium majus.

The vaginal opening is covered in the virgins by a thin delicate membrane- the hymen. It is very thin and delicate and ruptures on sexual intercourse. The first thing that we do is to look whether the hymen is intact or not. If the hymen is intact, the presumption is that the female is telling a lie and trying to implicate the person falsely. In the diagram 1, the hymen is showing a tear at 5 O' clock position. By referring to figure 2, you can know why this tear is called to be at 5 O' clock position.

Forcible intercourse also causes injuries to vestibule, an area lying between urethra and vagina (see fig 1). Injuries may also occur to fourchette and perineum. These are very strong indications that the woman has been raped. Even married women, who are used to sexual intercourse by their husbands don't show rupture of fourchette, perineum or vestibule.

Sometimes the walls of the vagina may be so severely torn that they may reach the anus. This is a very severe injury and may even cause death. This is a certain sign of forcible rape (fig 3).

Most people who commit rape are of low socio-economic status and suffer from multifarious venereal diseases. During intercourse they transmit these diseases to their victims. A careful examination of the victim for the signs of disease is also very helpful in estimating whether rape has been done or not. This is a very valuable pointer to us. Interestingly, this can happen the other way round too. An infected woman may give the disease to her attacker, and can thus punish him in more ways than one! She not only gives him a nasty disease, but if the same disease is found in the accused, as that in the woman, it may be a strong indication that he really assaulted the female.

We also introduce a cotton swab deep in the vagina (fig 4) and take out the semen from the vagina. In an unmarried female the presence of semen in the vagina is a very strong indication that rape has taken place. We can identify the semen by making a smear of the semen on a glass slide and looking under the microscope. If the material picked up by the swab is indeed the semen, then we see thousands of little snake like sperms (fig 5). Thus the presence of sperms almost confirms that we are dealing with a case of rape.

But what about rape on married women? Married women may have sperms in their vagina as a result of intercourse with their husbands. For this we have a slightly more complicated technique. These days there is a special technique called DNA fingerprinting which can differentiate between sperms of any two or more given individuals. We apply this technique and know whether the sperms belonged to the victim's husband or not.

Other injuries that we look for are injuries on the thighs, buttocks and abdomen. During a forcible rape, the person tries to force the thighs apart while the women wants to keep them together, to avoid rape. In this scuffle, injuries appear almost invariably on the inner side of abdomen (fig 6).

During passionate love storm, the assailant may attack victim's breasts, producing multifarious injuries to the breasts. He may tug at the breasts, squeeze and scratch them, suck them or even bite the nipple off. This might produce several injuries to the breasts including teeth bite marks (fig 7). These injuries strongly suggest that forcible intercourse may have taken place. Most of the times, the victim scratches at the assailant and thus small tags of skin can be found underneath her nails. These tags of skin obviously belong to the assailant. We can take these tags of skin out and can estimate the blood group of the individual. This can help us greatly in nabbing the criminal. We can even do DNA fingerprinting with these skin tags. This can pick out the culprit from among millions.

When the accused is apprehended, he might deny that he had sexual intercourse with the victim. Forensic experts again come to the rescue of police here. If his body shows multiple scratches, abrasions and bruises, it is a clear indication that he has had a scuffle with someone. But he case is clinched by another very ingenious technique. If the accused has had a sexual intercourse with the victim, there could be vaginal cells over his penis. These vaginal cells can not be seen with the naked eye, but can be detected by a test. These cells turn brown when exposed to the vapors of a chemical (Lugol's iodine). We wipe the skin of the penis with a filter paper moistened with salt solution and then expose it to vapors of Lugol's iodine. It the filter paper turns brown, we can tell the police that he has indeed had sexual intercourse with the victim.

Thus we can see that by a clever battery of tests, not only can we say that the woman is raped or not, we can also say who raped her. This medical evidence goes a long way in sending the accused to jail.

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