CAT/C/37/D/262/2005 Page 10 detained and raped the first time because of her husband’s political activities in Belarus, the Committee notes that she was raped for a second time because she had made a complaint about the initial rape. Upon return to Belarus, the complainant would thus be at risk of illtreatment independently of her relationship to her husband. Her report against the police accusing them of night visits, searches, violence and rape could easily make the complainant vulnerable to reprisals by the police anywhere in Belarus. As the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights defenders has argued, women human rights defenders face gender-specific forms of hostility, harassment and repression such as sexual harassment and rape.10 The police in Belarus function in a highly uniform and hierarchical system with a top-down rule; in current political conditions, it is hard to assess that any one location is safer than another. For all those reasons, the complainant would be of interest to the local police. 8.8 The State party has argued that the complainant is not credible because the allegations of sexual abuse and the medical report supporting these allegations were submitted late in the domestic proceedings. The Committee finds, to the contrary, that the complainant’s allegations are credible. The complainant’s explanation of the delay in mentioning the rapes to the national authorities is totally reasonable. It is well-known that the loss of privacy and prospect of humiliation based on revelation alone of the acts concerned may cause both women and men to withhold the fact that they have been subject to rape and/or other forms of sexual abuse until it appears absolutely necessary. Particularly for women, there is the additional fear of shaming and rejection by their partner or family members. Here the complainant’s allegation that her husband reacted to the complainant’s admission of rape by humiliating her and forbidding her to mention it in their asylum proceedings adds credibility to her claim. The Committee notes that as soon as her husband left her, the complainant who was then freed from his influence immediately mentioned the rapes to the national authorities in her request for revision of 11 October 2004. Further evidence of her psychological state or psychological “obstacles,” as called for by the State party, is unnecessary. The State party’s assertion that the complainant should have raised and substantiated the issue of sexual abuse earlier in the revision proceedings is insufficient basis upon which to find that her allegations of sexual abuse lack credibility, particularly in view of the fact that she was not represented in the proceedings. 8.9 With regard to the State party’s argument that there are many inconsistencies in the complainant’s claims, the Committee notes that this argument has not been substantiated since the State party has not specified what these inconsistencies were. 8.10 In assessing the risk of torture in the present case, the Committee considers that the complainant was clearly under the physical control of the police even though the acts concerned were perpetrated outside formal detention facilities. The acts concerned, constituting among others multiple rapes, surely constitute infliction of severe pain and suffering perpetrated for a number of impermissible purposes, including interrogation, intimidation, punishment, retaliation, humiliation and discrimination based on gender. Therefore, the Committee believes that the sexual abuse by the police in this case constitutes torture even though it was perpetrated outside formal detention facilities. Moreover, the authorities in Belarus appear to have failed to investigate, prosecute and punish the police for such acts. This failure to act increases the risk of ill-treatment upon the complainant’s return to Belarus, since the perpetrators of the rapes have never been investigated and can mistreat 10 See the Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights defenders, E/CN.4/2002/106, 27 February 2002, para.91.