Why is the conviction rate for rape so low?
On Saturday, the campaign group Women Against Rape (WAR) will stage The Rape of Justice - Who’s Guilty?
Women are invited to speak at the "public trial" about their experiences of sexual violence.
But the event is designed to highlight the low conviction rate for rape.
WAR has been campaigning for 30 years now and in that time big changes have been made. In 1991 rape within marriage became a crime, Consent now has a legal definition.
Yet there are only 19 Sexual Referral centres in the UK, only 5.7% of reported rapes result in a conviction. Highlighted by the lovely Witchy At the Foot of the Stairs, last November - The Map of Gaps is horrifying. Only 32 Rape Crisis centres across the country and they’re ALL under threat? Pretty much, wherever you live, you have nowhere to go if you are raped. No-one to talk to and no-one to support you.
Soooo, nowhere to go and no-one to talk to. Just how many assaults and rapes go unreported then? So many more than are actually reported, and of those precious few women who do go ahead and report it, a pitiful number see a conviction.
Do we not care? Is this not a Serious crime? Is this not taken seriously? Why not? It’s just wrong, so very very wrong.
I think it’s a very common and horrifying trend that rape is becoming more and more acceptable. All of a sudden lately we have articles popping up everywhere talking about rape myths and how “true rape” is when a woman is brutally attacked by a stranger, anything else is just disagreements among acquaintances.
We now have “gray rape” and most college students who are date raped don’t think that they’ve been raped because it was an acquaintance who committed the crime.
Ask a room full of people if rape is wrong and most likely 100% of them will say “yes, of course it’s wrong”. Then start going into specifics such as “a husband forces his wife” or “a woman withdraws consent after intercourse has started and the man continues anyway” and suddenly a good percentage of the people in the room will say “well, that’s not rape”.
Comment by Angie Bowen — March 8, 2008 @ 5:38 pm