By Jallel Omari

Guest columnist

I am not a victim of assault. I have always been blessed, lucky or just coincidentally, have never, in my 24 years, had another person attack me.

Not everyone, however, is so fortunate. Last Wednesday I read the column in The Post about the recovery of a rape survivor. After reading the column, I found an emotion building in me. Fury.

I have been told that when people commit crimes, forgiveness should be called for. But, above and beyond such forgiveness, what about the implications to society, the criminal, and the victim? Forgiveness doesn’t annihilate the truth.

I ask a few questions, which perhaps you maybe also ask yourself: Where is compassion? Where is kindness? Where is justice?

It is the victim who best knows the crime committed against them, and has had their sense of justice forced out of hiding, completely against their own will, without any pretension of righteousness. The victim’s sense of compassion is also perfectly evident, laid bare by the unasked-for assault against it. The victim’s sense of kindness, which has been horribly maligned, cannot help but be aware of its own existence when in such agony.

To be short, the minimization of the wrongdoing of these crimes trivializes the victim’s pain. And by trivializing their pain, we have crushed justice, and, brutally and cruelly murdered compassion, kindness and common decency.

I feel that the person who commits rape deserves to die. Please don’t misunderstand; it isn’t our job to give them their death. Individuals were never supposed to kill people, and if we choose to be humble in our government and give up the decision of life or death as not belonging to us, we give up capital punishment as well. But to pretend that this crime does not deserve death when it does is a terrible crime.

Here is why: compassion and kindness demand recognition of the crime.

By minimizing the crime, and forgetting the weight of its horror, we add to the suffering of the victim, and fail to help all parties involved.

I would suggest that we should forgive, but not forget. Let’s always remember to be furiously upset at the mere existence of such criminals, and hold them up to a standard of real public disgust — an example of open public shame — until they become ashamed of their own arrogance, acquire some real disgust at themselves, and, hopefully, quietly confess their own crimes, and pay at least the small penalty dealt out by the law.