Rapex

An anti-rape device from South Africa (via Metafilter):

A South African inventor unveiled a new anti-rape female condom on Wednesday that hooks onto an attacker’s penis and aims to cut one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world.

“Nothing has ever been done to help a woman so that she does not get raped and I thought it was high time,” Sonette Ehlers, 57, said of the “rapex,” a device worn like a tampon that has sparked controversy in a country used to daily reports of violent crime.

Police statistics show more than 50,000 rapes are reported every year, while experts say the real figure could be four times that because they say most rapes of acquaintances or children are never reported.

Ehlers said the “rapex” hooks onto the rapist’s skin, allowing the victim time to escape and helping to identify perpetrators.

“He will obviously be too pre-occupied at this stage,” she told reporters in Kleinmond, a small holiday village about 100km (60 miles) east of Cape Town. “I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital.”

The device, made of latex and held firm by shafts of sharp barbs, can only be removed from the man by surgery, which will alert hospital staff, and ultimately, the police, she said.

It also reduces the chances of pregnancy or HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases from the attacker by acting in the same way as a female condom.

Vagina Dentata with a vengeance. It’s one of those things you think first off, hey, why didn’t anyone think of this before, great idea….and then after a while you realise, no, it’s absolutely horrible.

As a minor pedantic aside, the poster at Metafilter mentions the horrific rape statistics from South Africa, “though Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, has refuted the findings”. No he hasn’t; he’s questioned them. “Refuted” means “proved that they’re wrong”. I wish people wouldn’t misuse that word.