"Commotion" prevents rape in Sierra Leone

This has been circulating around a bit, but I found it so outrageous/hilarious/absurd that I had to share here as well. Wronging Rights stumbled across a recent press release from Weyone, a "a public information outlet for the ruling All Peoples Congress political party" in Sierra Leone, in which the APC refutes allegations that women were raped by security forces last month at the headquarters of the opposition, the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

The press release, titled, "We Meant No Harm to Womanhood and Reaffirm That Alleged Rape Is a Mere Fabrication" asserts, among other things, that the rape could not have occurred as it is alleged because:

"Under normal circumstance nature prevents the male penis from erecting when the individual is under threat or acting in a commotion. Even during war time incidents of rape occur when all is calm and quite and not when the battle in raging.
Thus, considering the circumstantial evidence, it is again very doubtful that the alleged victims indeed suffered from rape at a time when bottles and stones were being hurled from different directions..."

I'm sure this will be news to the hundreds of thousands of women who have been raped in wartime across the world.

For a far wittier evaluation of this incredible defense, see the original post on Wronging Rights, "In Which We Learn Something New About Penises."