Why is rape so easy to get away with?

[neonsamurai]

Following on from this thread, here's an article from the feminists favourite newspaper The Guardian. It's written by Julie Bindel, so don't expect any compassion for men:

Why is rape so easy to get away with?

Despite all the reforms to the police and courts, rape victims have only a tiny chance of seeing their attacker convicted. Julie Bindel investigates

Thursday February 1, 2007
The Guardian

'I coped with being raped," says Jane Lewis, who was attacked by a man two years ago at the party where they met, "but I went mad when he was acquitted. That is when I started fantasising about killing him." She later discovered that he had been accused of rape four times previously: twice not charged, and twice acquitted by a jury.
Today, rape might as well be legal. With women frequently accused of making false allegations, and victims who had consumed alcohol blamed for "getting themselves raped", it is a wonder that the conviction rate for reported rapes is as high as the current figure of 5%.

Rape is an everyday occurrence. Research published yesterday by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Home Office Inspectorates estimates that of the 50,000 rapes thought to occur each year, between 75% and 95% are never reported. And almost a third of reported cases recorded by police as "no crime" should have been properly investigated as rape.
If a man commits a rape, then he has, on average, a less than 1% chance of being convicted. Those most likely to result in a conviction are classic stranger rapes, involving a man with a knife who breaks into the victim's home or drags her into the bushes.

Elizabeth Harrison is the manager of the Whitechapel Haven, one of three centres in London that provide a 24-hour service to help anyone who has been recently raped or sexually assaulted. She is all too aware that many rape victims are not believed if they have been drinking. "On the one hand, doctors we use at the Haven are saying these women are too drunk to consent to a medical examination," says Harrison, "but the court is saying that she was not too drunk to consent to sex."

I have observed a number of rape trials. One case I sat through concerned a woman who had met a man at 2am while waiting for the night bus after an evening out with friends. They spoke for five minutes before going on to a grass verge where they had anal and oral sex. She said it was rape. He said she was gagging for it. She admitted she had drunk six alcopops. The jury acquitted the man.

Alcohol seems to have become the new short skirt. The majority of cases resulting in an acquittal now involve a complainant who had been drinking. And despite changes to both legislation and court conduct over the past 30 years, conviction rates continue to plummet. How can that be?

Nicole Westmarland, chair of the Rape Crisis Federation, believes that the main obstacle to convicting rapists is the stereotypes about the crime. "Those responsible in the criminal justice system know that everything has been done with the process and legislation," she says, "and we are now at a really dangerous place where they might start to look at measures such as restorative justice, or downgrading 'date rape' and differentiating it from what many see as 'real' rape, involving a stranger and a back alley."

"People do know that rape is very common," agrees Harrison, "but many people - including those on juries - protect themselves by thinking, 'I would have fought him off' or 'The men I know wouldn't do that.' If you start accepting that you can't stop it happening to you, or that the nice man you work with might be capable of doing it, that's when it gets frightening."

The CPS will only take a case to court if it has a "reasonable chance of conviction". This means that those cases that fit the stereotype - such as stranger rapes - take precedence over the more commonplace ones. Yet often women say that being raped by a man they love and trust hurts more than being attacked by a man they will never see again.

"If cases that appear difficult to win do not get to court," says Hamish Brown, a retired senior police officer and expert on sexual violence, "then jurors will never get the chance to become educated about those more complicated cases that rarely go forward." Despite this, Brown admits that in cases where it is simply "her word against his", he would usually decide not to charge. "If there is too much in the defence's favour, such as she was carrying condoms, it is unlikely to result in a conviction."

What is going wrong? Police deal with rape within a culture of suspicion. Despite feminists heaping praise on the police since they improved their approach to victims from the bad old days of the 70s and 80s, response to rape is still patchy and, at times, unacceptable. A Channel 4 documentary, screened last year, portrayed some officers as lazy and sexist and an allegation of rape by a prostitute as being treated lightly.

Dave Gee, vice-chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers working group on rape, admits that while some forces have made "great strides" towards improving victim care and rape investigation, others stand still. "There are still problems with some police attitudes around rape," says Gee, "because police officers can take on board the stereotypes that a lot of the general public do about rape."

Accusations and press reports of women making false allegations have been widespread recently, and yet the most up-to-date research on this shows that false rape allegations are no higher than in any other crime, and stand at around 3%, although police officers questioned in the same report assumed 23% were false. One academic who has written extensively about false allegations of rape says his students believe that half of all rape complaints are false.

There are many calls for women to be harshly treated if they appear to be lying about rape. At the moment, these voices seem louder than those calling for justice for the thousands of rape victims who do not see their attacker dealt with by the law. Last year a Labour Peer, Lord Campbell-Savours, used parliamentary privilege to name a woman during a debate on rape legislation, calling her "a serial and repeated liar" after a man found guilty of raping her had his conviction overturned. The woman neither admitted nor was charged with making a false allegation. Many tabloid newspapers have joined in, giving the impression that rape is simply a figment of mad women's imaginations.

Some women who report rape can end up in the dock. Last year, a teenager who reported being raped by three men in a park was cautioned by police for perverting the course of justice after the accused showed footage from a mobile phone of the victim engaging in sexual activity with one of the men. "It proved nothing," she tells me, "except that they were filming the rape for porn." Police have since wiped the caution after the victim challenged it.

Previous allegations can influence whether or not police and jurors decide if the complainant is lying. The horrific consequence of this attitude is that women raped more than once who report attacks to the police are even less likely to get justice than others. Complainants who the police or courts decide have lied could be named, and there are now even calls for their DNA to be filed in case of future reports of rape.

Some women who report rape risk heavy penalties in the civil courts. Lucy Green is one of a number of women sued for slander in the past decade after the men they accused were either not charged or acquitted in court. "All of a sudden I was in court as a defendant, not a victim of rape, which I had been prepared to endure. I was so scared I wet myself on several occasions during cross-examination."

The jury was divided and gave a hung verdict. "If he had won I would have been forced to make a public apology and pay him money for raping me."

Not only are women who report rape routinely viewed as liars; it would seem that once a woman becomes sexually active she is no longer allowed to say "no" on subsequent occasions. Despite legislation introduced in 1999 to restrict defence barristers from raising a complainant's sexual history in court, judges all too often allow them to get away with it. I have witnessed defence lawyers badgering women with questions about their sexual activity while judges and prosecutors do nothing to stop them.

For the many women who do not receive justice, the only route left open can be claiming criminal injuries compensation (CIC). Judith Scott was raped at knife-point in 1983, and three years later picked a man called David Mulcahy out of an identification parade. But the procedure was compromised and the police were forced to release him. He was eventually arrested, more than 10 years later, after the notorious "railway rapist", John Duffy, identified him as his partner. By then, Mulcahy had raped at least 12 more women and killed three.

Having battled with years of trauma as a result of the rape, and misplaced guilt at Mulcahy remaining free to rape and kill other women, she attended the trial, despite the fact that the CPS had decided not to pursue him for her rape. "I wanted some kind of closure for myself," says Scott, "and obviously found sitting through the trial very, very difficult."

After Mulcahy's arrest, Scott was advised by the police to apply for compensation, and was examined by a psychiatrist hired by the CIC board, who concluded that she had "brought on her own trauma" by choosing to attend the trial. She says the board adjudicator, recommending that Scott should not be paid any additional compensation for trauma and loss of earnings (at the time of the rape, she was an aspiring dancer), asked her why she "went back for more".

"The whole process was like a re-enactment of the rape," says Scott, "with some abusive man wielding power over me."

Although the top payout for rape at the time was £7,500, (recently raised to £11,000), far bigger sums have been awarded to men who said they were falsely accused. Being accused of rape is seen as more serious and damaging than being raped, and yet research shows that levels of post- traumatic stress disorder is higher amongst rape victims than war veterans.

What needs to be done? Not, says Harrison, government advertising campaigns that warn men they will go to prison if they commit rape, such as the one run in lads' mags last year. "These men are aware that the likelihood is they won't even get charged, let alone convicted, " she says. Police, the CPS and campaigning organisations all say that changes need to take place outside the courtroom, such as education programmes to debunk the myths about rape. "It is the responsibility of the government to educate potential jurors that all rape is real rape," says Lewis, "because at the moment, most rapists know they are very unlikely to be punished."

In 1998, a headline appeared in the local Grimsby weekly: "Man faces rape charge". He had dragged a 15-year-old girl down an alley and assaulted her. The CPS decided not to pursue the case. That man was Ian Huntley. At the time, he was not seen as a danger to the public, and neither are the majority of other "opportunist" rapists who get away with it.

One victim of rape, the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, once said that women and children were not protected by the law as it stood from "men who rape, rape, rape", and would have to take the law into their own hands if justice was ever to be done. "Women should get guns and should be allowed to use them to defend themselves," she said. If women continue to be denied justice, there will be many who agree with her.

Some names have been changed.

Here's the thing. Rape convictions are at an all time low and Bindel (quite rightly) wants more rapists behind bars. But other than amending the law in the UK (which would be a travesty) no-one has any ideas on how to catch rapists. They want women who claim rape to be taken more seriously, but the whole legal system in the UK is based under the ideal that everyone is equal before the eyes of the law.

Let's say that Bindel is correct. Only 3% of rape accusations are false and therefore 97% of accusations are real. If we are unable to convict the men responsible, and there are 50,000 rapes a year then  it is down to women to protect themselves. If the the law can do nothing to stop this happening then it's time to stop relying on something that can't help. I'm not saying that women are responsible for being raped, but logic would suggest that having sex with a stranger you just met at a bus stop, in a verge at 2am after consuming a large quantity of alcohol is foolhardy. If I was warned about the dangers of AIDS in Africa, went there on holiday, got steaming drunk and had unprotected sex with a prostitute there, would I deserve to get AIDS? No. But I would be responsible for putting myself in danger. Stop the campaigns aimed at men and scare women into acting more responsibility, the same way we were scared into not taking any chances with AIDS.

But if Bindel is wrong (as she has been in the past when accusing footballers of being rapists) in that there is a third or maybe fourth alternative to false or true rape accusations. A false allegation to me suggests a malicious attempt to accuse the alleged rapist or a crime that didn't happen. This would indicate that the alleged victim knows full well what happened and is trying to pervert the coarse of justice. If these account for only 3% of of the rape allegations, that doesn't automatically make the other 97% true.

A large amount of these rape cases fall flat on their faces because the woman was too drunk to remember what happened, or their judgement was severely impaired. Surely they cannot be certain of their own actions at the time? We don't allow people in the UK to be drunk in charge of a vehicle, so people giving evidence based on a time when they were unable to be certain of the facts seems ludicrous. I'm sure lots of rape does happen when people are drunk, but so does a lot of other crimes an then evidence can't be relied upon.

What I'm trying to say here is that there are true rape accusations, false accusations and situations whereby even the victim has to make assumptions about what has transpired.

[strangedisk]

Maybe this tells part of the reason that "rape is so easy to get away with" (so many rape allegations do not have any evidence to back them up):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=432637&in_page_id=1770

One of many, many, many...

[poiuyt]

But there is infact an internal logic to all this precious vagina hysteria in western society. An ill willed malice towards others, corroding the sensibilities of honest people everywhere. Here it is

The social majority deems that there must be a staisfaction that the 97% of falsely accused men get from fucking, that the accusing women dont themselves get but want restitution for and are entitled to. Otherwise there could be no valid accusation in the first place, founded or unfounded on which State mongers and agents could make judgement.

And only because this rotten and bigotted society accepts such pernicious logic does this one sided discussion of matters sexual arise at all.

Angryharry says thishttp:www.angryharry.com

When the police, the lawyers, the doctors and the juries have investigated the allegations of rape, only some 5% lead to convictions. And there is no evidence to be found anywhere else to suggest that most of the other 95% of those accused men are simply getting away with rape. There is, however, plenty of evidence to suggest that many women are making false accusations of rape and that the media and the politicians - with very few exceptions - are doing their very best to block any discussion about this.

But the police ,the lawyers ,the doctors and the juries are still in agreement with the mendacious social majority who deem that inequitable satisfaction accrues to the man from intercousre with a woman for which he must be charged, levied or taxed one way or the other. Charges levies and taxes over which police, lawyers, doctors, juries and the social majority remain employed !!! Here lies societies "economy based on bigottry" problem. A problem subssisting long before the falsely accusing woman makes her wretched allegation 97% of which come to nothing.

[zarbyman]

Very interesting.

Government enforcing payment for sex -- if not money than jail time.

Your logic it seems even more applicable to child support and spousal support than rape.

This makes the government what? A pimp?

[zarbyman]

It seems to me that a woman has a million and one opportunities to say "no" before sex occurs everything from saying no when he asks her to dinner to saying no while both are naked moments before the "dirty deed" takes place. It seems to me that if she bypasses every one of these opportunities to say "no" and engages in sex it should be assumed that she wanted it and benefitted from it every bit as much as he.

Sex is an extremely healthy activity (assuming one is not destroyed by its consequences) -- physically, psychologically, and emotionally. I don't believe there is any reason to believe that one sex benefits from it more than the other. In times past, women got pregnant and men didn't. That was a major difference and was probably the start of women being more reluctant to engage in sex than men. Now that factor is gone. Actually, men in effect get "pregnant" (legal liabilities of child birth) whether they wish or not while women legally can avoid or terminate pregnancy. Sex is more dangerous for men than women, now. Actually, men should be protected from and compensated for sex not vice versa.

[CaptDMO]

Now that factor is gone. Actually, men in effect get "pregnant" (legal liabilities of child birth) whether they wish or not while women legally can avoid or terminate pregnancy. Sex is more dangerous for men than women, now. Actually, men should be protected from and compensated for sex not vice versa.

BAM!

I'd only add ..."whether they wish or not, and in an alarming number of litigated cases, whether they've participated or not.......

Tack that on to AHs' bit, close with "NOW, Shut The Fuck Up!" and I'll sign on!

[The Biscuit Queen]

Rape is by its very nature not conductive to holding up in a court of law. I agree that since this is true, and since making it hold up in law requires taking the rights away from innocents, then the only option is for women to take this into their own hands and practice safer living. We have been taught we should be able to do whatever we want, walk where we want, wear what we want, drink what we want. Well, thanks feminism, but that simply is not true, and anyone who has been raped due to this attitude can directly thank feminism.

Yes, some men are rapists, and they deserve to be put in jail. There is never an excuse for rape. That does not excuse us of personal responsibility for our own actions.

[zarbyman]

Yes, BQ, but I woudn't go as far as you do. You almost make it sound like women enter a forest with wild animals and thus must act with extreme care. I don't believe that is true. I also don't think the law is wholely incapable of dealing with the problem of rape. 

Hard core rape can be prosecuted. The case where a man jumps out of the bushes and rapes a woman absolutely can be dealt with by the law. She is going to have at least some signs of struggle. I am not saying she has to put up a huge fight but if nothing else she is going to have some scratches and what not from being tackled or from struggle. I agree at some point not resisting makes sense. However, I think there should be at least some resistence and thus at least some sign of resistence.

The problem arises when the allegation is made against a husband or a boyfriend or even someone who was just met in a bar. If you marry someone, establish an obvious relationship with some, or even leave the bar with someone, I think things change. Feminists will not admit this.

I am not saying a relationship gives rise to a privilege to rape. I am saying that the dynamics of the situation changes. The extreme example is a husband who has had sex with his wife 1,000 times before. All of a sudden she says he raped her. Look, if she doesn't want to have sex with him, she can move out. She can file for divorce. Now, if he brutally attacks her, that is a different thing. But, if it is just "I didn't consent." I say bullshit. If she is sleeping in his bed (or him in hers), I say bullshit. Feminists will say what if he locked her in the house, etc. (I think there was a TV show like that). Well, that may be different, but that is extremely rare.  For the average woman who has a car, a job, family, friends, etc., she has the ability to not sleep in his bed (or vice versa) if she doesn't want to. So, I say bullshit. The risk of wrongful conviction is just too high. Even if he has sex once with her without her consent, she can certainly make sure it never happens again (by leaving him, filing for divorce, etc.). If some husband gets one extra probably less than good sexual encounter before divorce, I don't think that is the end of the world. On the other hand, if men go to prison due to at best an ambiguous situation that is the end of the world (for those men). I think most people would agree that sexual relationships contain ambiguity. If the woman establishes a sexual relationship with a man or even does something clearly leading up to a sexual relationship (like removing her clothes, allowing her into circumstances associated with sexual relationships such as say a weekend trip to a romantic place, etc., things just change.

I wouldn't for a second suggest that the law shouldn't take the stranger jumping out of the bush (or even the ex husband or separated husband jumping out of a bush) seriously. I do think these men deserve a fair trial and things might not be as claimed. But, my main point is that the so called date rape and certainly the so called marital rape allegations are extremely, extremely dangerous. Along similar lines, the cases involving no indepenently verifiable evidence of struggle are extremely danagerous. The idea that the conviction rape for these types of cases is "too low" is dangerous. The fact is that juries are the best judge of these cases. Many of them should never even get to a jury. Judgment should be exercised.

[poiuyt]

[A SERVING BRITISH] POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/when-is-a-rape-not-a-rape-shock/

As a serving policeman, there are several things I am not allowed to talk about.

There are plenty of operational secrets we cannot discuss, but I'm not referring to those. I'm talking about the taboo subjects. The 'detection' rate for rape is one of these.

It's very frustrating to sit and listen to pundits talking about the low number of rape convictions in Court, when as police officers we all know what lies behind these poor numbers.

For example, I couldn't possibly tell you that out of every ten rapes which are reported in Ruraltown, at least eight turn out to be nonsense. To be fair, eight out of ten of everything reported at Ruraltown police station is nonsense, why should rape be any different?

I couldn't tell you that of the remaining two, an existing alcohol-fuelled chaotic drug-based relationship is a factor in at least one of these, and 'consent' is probably present in the other to some degree. In my whole service I can only recall three stranger rapes and a half a dozen where consent was withdrawn at the time and he carried on. But I can't tell you that.

I can't tell you that most of the adult rapes reported in Ruraltown represent either the latest in a series of allegations designed to score points against an 'ex, lies designed to fend off an angry parent when a curfew has been missed or a defence mechanism when a jilted 'partner' discovers an infidelity.

A rape once reported, even if withdrawn later, is in the system and a failure to bring someone to justice, even if it never happened, shows up in the 'detection' rate. The 'detection rate' is low because the number of rapes which actually happen is low. I couldn't possibly say that though.

So who suffers when Charlene drops by the nick to accuse Wayne of raping her because she is hacked off that he used her child benefit money for drugs? Who suffers when we deploy a full investigation team, send officers out to arrest Wayne and deploy CSI's and specialist rape officers to the victim suite, all for Charlene to suddenly decide that she loves him and he didn't do it after all? Who loses when she can't identify a scene (because there never was a scene) when we can see on CCTV that Wayne was in the High Street (on his own) at the material time and that her mobile phone records show that she was texting her mate who works at Tesco, right at the time she was supposed to be being brutally taken by the boy?

The next genuine rape victim to walk into the police station, that's who. The next genuine victim who may face the cynical looks and delayed reaction from officers who have just finished dealing with the last ten Charlenes.

I also shouldn't tell you that it is Force Policy, in all but the most exceptional cases, not to prosecute Charlene for wasting police time. Apparently this would prevent genuine victims from coming forward. Make no mistake, the genuine victims suffer, the detection rate is low and we keep pretending that everything is alright.

The facts about rape seen from the street are this: most genuine rapes are against children under 13 years old and are within the family or family circle. Genuine adult rape is rare and nearly always charged to Court; what a jury do next is for them, but it usually comes down to 'consent' issues, and being as they were not in the bedroom at the time, and we are not simply proving intercourse because that is already admitted by the defendant, it's not really within our gift to prove or disprove consent. Consent can amount to one word, said in a half whisper six months before in a darkened room where no one else was present.

But we can't possibly say any of this. We will simply accept that it's all our fault and promise to do better in the future.

[dr e]

Great piece Poiuyt!  SDome of the comments on the blog are good also with many coming from policemen agreeing with the OP and saying they see similar numbers in their districts. Where are the feminists?   

[davis2ab]

Wow. Talk about a blast from the past.

Does any one think attitudes amongst the public at large has changed since this thread started?

I do. I think the public is much more willing to be skeptical about articles like this now.

Do I delude myself?  I think progress has been made.

The article (rape is easy to get away with) just seems ludicrous on its face at least to me.

A lot of the problem is definitions.

If you are talking about violent true honest to God rape, I think that is very, very difficult to get away with.  The DNA will nail the offender. The jury will convict in a nano second.

The only rape that is even arguably difficult to prove is the "he said, she said" type of rape.

Well, it seems to me that at least some of the burden for avoiding that problem needs to be placed on women.  It am sick and tired of hearing that they can dress however they want, act as provocatively as they want, etc. and still claim rape. They create ambiguity and potential confusion.

There was merit to the notion that a woman should not be in certain situations, act certain ways, etc.  If she appears to give consent, well, the guy may act on that appearance. Duh.

There is a problem (e.g. the inherent dance that goes on between the sexes). The feminist solution is to put all the burden and all the risk on the male. BS. It should be shared.

[davis2ab]

As already noted, above, the ultimate ambiguity is marital rape.

The woman agrees to marriage (which inherently involves consent to sex). The woman climbs into bed with her husband. It seems to me that the husband is entitled to believe she consents to sex.

I am not exactly say that a husband can never be guilty of rape of a wife. I am saying that there ought to be an extremely strong presumption of consent (e.g. absent violence, a weapon, etc.).

I know personally a guy who was charged with marital rape, arrested, jailed, etc.  His wife later withdrew the complaint. There was no evidence at all of rape other than her words. Yes, there was DNA material inside her vagina. So what? Shouldn't a husband's DNA be inside his wife?  There was no evidence at all that the DNA got there without her consent other than her words.

[Quentin0352]

As already noted, above, the ultimate ambiguity is marital rape.

The woman agrees to marriage (which inherently involves consent to sex). The woman climbs into bed with her husband. It seems to me that the husband is entitled to believe she consents to sex.

I am not exactly say that a husband can never be guilty of rape of a wife. I am saying that there ought to be an extremely strong presumption of consent (e.g. absent violence, a weapon, etc.).

I know personally a guy who was charged with marital rape, arrested, jailed, etc.  His wife later withdrew the complaint. There was no evidence at all of rape other than her words. Yes, there was DNA material inside her vagina. So what? Shouldn't a husband's DNA be inside his wife?  There was no evidence at all that the DNA got there without her consent other than her words.

Exactly and yet if she wants to get pregnant, she can obtain his DNA in any manner she wants to INCLUDE raping him and he is fully responsible with no ability to file charges or right of appeal. sorry ladies but since you tell men to shut up and "man up" on matters of women committing rape, molesting boys or committing fraud to gain child support while men have no rights to contact with their children, then sorry, you need to 'WOman up" and face the fact you can't scream rape constantly if you get drunk and pull a train on every guy in the party to only decide the next day it wasn't such a great idea after all.

[neoteny]

It's more than a year since the last time I've made my favorite quotation on the subject:


"Unwanted sex isn't rape; unavoidable sex is." -- Kate Fillion in "Lip Service"

[BRIAN]

My question is why do RadFems insist on stretching the definition of rape to things that aren't rape? Maybe rape would be more provable if there was a clear definition of the crime. If I grab a woman and hold a knife to her throat and force my penis into her thats rape. if I buy her some drinks convince her to go to a hotel and put my penis in her that isnt rape, unless you listen to the RadFems definition of rape.