From rape investigator to rape victim

15,165 rapes were reported to the police in England and Wales in the year 2009/2010, according to Home Office figures. Of those, just over eleven hundred were by men.

Recently, one male victim spoke out, the account of his ordeal being published in The Guardian. The victim is also a police officer who had spent fifteen years specialising in serious crime and sexual offences. It gave him a traumatic insight into what rape victims - who are overwhelmingly female - often experience and why so few are willing to take their case to court.

Here is a quote from early on in the article:
...a couple of weeks ago, I made a series of choices that led to me, a heterosexual man, waking up in a man's bed, trapped underneath him. Being raped. I'm still struggling to come to terms with how, despite my decades of professional experience, I made the choices that led to me being raped. At no point the evening before had I felt at risk. At no point did I think I was making a bad decision.

Sadly and in common with many, many other people, this experienced police officer came to the conclusion that the rape was to a large extent his - the victim's - fault. He talks of "choices" and a "bad decision" that led to him being raped. He feels he placed himself in a situation that allowed another man to attack him, rather than laying the blame where it truly belongs: at the door of the rapist.

The rapist made the choice to force himself on his victim, that was the only "bad decision" that was made in the scenario outlined in the article.

The victim was by his own admission very drunk and he woke from his stupor while the rape was in progress. There was no doubt in his mind that he did not give consent to sexual intercourse. And when he mentioned the incident to his boss in the police force, it seems there was no question mark over whether he gave his consent to the act or not. It was simply taken as read that he did not.

Likewise, when the victim refused to co-operate with the police desire to push to prosecute his attacker, there was no suggestion that this was because the allegation was in any way false.

These are his reported words on the reasons why he refused to press charges:
I'm a victim first and a police officer second. I'm not the first victim to decide not to press charges, and I won't be the last. Being a cop means I know the system, and it has scared me off. I know this case would be likely to end in court and, from that point, I couldn't maintain my anonymity. I couldn't cope with the added burden of being a cop as well as a victim.

Let me make it clear: I feel extremely sorry for this rape victim. His was a harrowing ordeal - as all rapes are - and he was left with his self-esteem and emotions in tatters. But I can't help wondering how his case would have been regarded had he been a woman reporting the same scenario. Or a man unknown to the investigating officers.

The article ends with the police officer saying he now has more sympathy and empathy for those victims he has been working with.

What is sad is that it took a rape for him to gain this understanding.

When rapists are allowed to strike again...and again...

Two cases are prominently mentioned by Baroness Stern in her review into the handling of rape cases. Those of John Worboys and Kirk Reid.

An Independent Police Complaints Commission report in 2010 found that systematic failures by the Metropolitan Police, especially their willingness to believe the suspects' stories rather than those of their victims, left both men free for several years to continue preying on women until they were finally caught.

In the case of John Worboys, the so-called "Black Cab Rapist", the first reports about his attacks were made in 2002, but the police didn't bring him to justice until 2008. Part of the reason for that was a belief that a driver of a black cab couldn't possibly be guilty of raping women. Worboys was given the benefit of the doubt and was able to make further attacks. It's widely believed more than a hundred women were raped or sexually assaulted by John Worboys before the police finally brought him in.

In the case of Kirk Reid, a South London chef, he was cleared of an indecent assault in 1995, then began attacking women in the Wandsworth area in 2001. Reid first crossed the police radar in 2002, became a rape suspect in 2004, but despite his name repeatedly coming up in the investigation, it wasn't until 2008 that the police charged him. Reid raped and sexually assaulted 71 women over a period of eight years. The IPCC ruled that the police failed to take seriously the complaints made against Reid by his victims.

The IPCC report into both cases made it clear the Metropolitan Police Service was severely at fault. But no police officer lost their job over what happened. Meanwhile, around 200 women are trying to rebuild their lives. At least their attackers are finally in prison. For the time being.

It's a simple enough conclusion to draw. If the police had taken the victims seriously from the beginning and treated their cases with the gravity they deserved, they could have saved multitudes of other women from the trauma of being raped.

CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT??