A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angelique had already lived through horror. Her father had been a politician. During the civil war, rebel soldiers had come to the family compound, burned their house, and killed Angelique’s parents. She had been taken to prison, where she was made the sex slave of the prison governor. Despite the persecution she’d experienced, she was refused asylum.

Back in April, I wrote for WMC’s Women Under Siege about the legal gender imbalance female victims of sexualized violence face around the world. But a disturbing recent investigation by the independent Indian weekly newsmagazine Tehelka suggests that the miscarriage of justice in some cases of rape and sexual assault might be linked to prejudice on the part of those delivering justice, rather than bias within the law itself.