Learn more about the Rape-aXe anti-rape condom for women
Officially the Rape-aXe, a revolutionary invention. This invention was tested in the country where the World Cup was once played, one of the places with the highest rate of sexual abuse on the planet, with half a million rapes a year.
The idea came from the head of Dr. Sonnet Ehlers, a South African doctor who, when she was taking her first steps in medicine 20 years ago, was horrified when she attended to a patient who had just been raped.
“She was a breathing corpse. Her eyes were dead,” says the doctor, whose only sentence that the assaulted woman managed to utter stuck with her: “If I had teeth down there…”.
That day she swore she would do something to put an end to a scourge that turns any individual into a potential victim and that does not understand color, country or social status.
Dr. Ehlers‘ eagerness to help women who have gone through the trauma of rape gave rise many years later to Rape-aXe, a seemingly harmless but scathing little gadget.
The “rapist-trapping” condom works as follows: the latex sheath is inserted into the female vagina in the same way as a tampon and, in the event of penetration, the penis is trapped by two serrated inner grooves that cause sharp pain and grip the assailant’s member.
The pain suffered by the aggressor -now victim- gives the original victim room to escape or raise the alarm.
The rapist, who while the condom is attached to his sex will be unable to urinate and will walk with great difficulty, will only be able to get out of the trap with a small surgical intervention, which will force him to go to a medical center to be treated, thus facilitating his identification and subsequent arrest.
Interestingly, and despite what it may seem, Dr. Ehlers assures that the device does not cause skin wounds, so no fluids are released that could transmit sexually transmitted diseases, nor does it cause irreversible damage.
However, in case the aggressor tries to get rid of the “condom with teeth” the only thing he will achieve is that the device will contract, accentuating the pain significantly.
The first prototype of Rape-aXe was launched in 2005 in the South African province of Cape Town.
Dr. Ehlers had to sell her house and her car to start production of the innovative project and, before launching it, she even sought the opinion of ex-convicts, who assured her that Rape-aXe would certainly take away the pain.
