The provenance of videos on the Internet is always doubtful - there are very few ways to tell if what you’re watching is legit and whether it’s from the time or place claimed. So we’d take this extremely upsetting video of an alleged rapist getting punished by having a rock hung from his ballsack with a grain of salt.

We’re not dismissing the very real pain being demonstrated by the dude in the clip - he’s obviously experiencing more than his fair share of gonadal misery. But all that we “know” about the video is that it’s from somewhere in Zambia and the man’s an accused rapist. Neither of those things is provable by watching it, and any additional information is thin on the ground.

Rape is a terrible crime, full stop. But this kind of barbaric punishment doesn’t really do a lot to deter future offenders. It’s hard to say what will, exactly, but going viral because you have a stone dangling from your nether regions as you’re tied to a pole isn’t a humane method of rehabilitation. Whatever the backstory behind this disturbing video, we hope we don’t see anything like it again soon.

We saw this first on Newspage.co.za.