Victims' Voices

The voices of rape victims are silenced. Mostly by the social stigma of "shame" - which comes from society's prevailing attitude of blaming the victims for their own attacks. So women who have been raped may tell one or two close friends, perhaps a member of their family, or a trusted partner. They may tell the police. Or they may tell no one at all.

Because rape is so often regarded as a "dirty" secret and kept behind this convenient veil of shame, it is all too easy for people who have never been raped or sexually assaulted to assume it is not a widespread problem. And many of the many, many women who have been the victims of sexual violence think they are one of the very few. They are not. The recently published Stern Review (which can be found on the UK Government's Equalities website) is testament to that.

Now a new blog exists where people can anonymously post the stories of their rapes and experiences of sexual violence and coercion.

The accounts are heartbreaking because so many of them are so very ordinary. A party. A night out with a friend. A boyfriend. The simple, social things that so many women enjoy every day.

Another feature the accounts have in common is the effect of these assaults on the women who describe them. Life shattering.

Here are a few short extracts:

"None of my family have any idea of any of it and that’s the way I want it to stay. I’m telling my story here because I want people to read the story and know that rape victims never ask for it or deserve it. I didn’t ask for him to spike my drink. I didn’t ask him to violate me in my sleep. I didn’t ask to become pregnant only to lose the baby later. No one ever does."

"I couldn’t understand why (the police) didn’t believe me, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t help me, I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let me go home. I was still drunk and I could feel the throbbing pain from the choking and the rape.
I couldn’t go home. I spent the next 4 days in jail, waiting to see a judge about bail. I had to have a public defender because what they’d charged me with meant prison time - and it took time to find an attorney who would represent me.
The day I was released, I attempted to commit suicide."

"I’d been successful, and happy, and remarkable. Now I had nothing. I hated him but I blamed myself. I thought I’d “asked” for it, I thought I’d not made it clear - I let him link my arm, I let him get into my flat, I could have fought harder, I could have said something, I could have called him and told him he was a rapist scumbag, I could have gone to the Police. Everything I did was wrong. I blamed myself for everything."

"We had been together for about two months. We were in bed kissing, and he decided to have sex with me. He was on top of me, and I kept telling him to stop. He didn’t. He forced himself into me, and I felt myself starting to bleed. I pushed him off of me and ran out of the room, crying. I cleaned up in the bathroom, then went outside to have a cigarette. He followed me. Still crying, I said to him, “Are you happy now, you fucking asshole?” He looked at me tenderly, enveloped me in a hug, and said, “I love you, baby.”"

"I remember lying there with his hands all over me. He kept touching me, he wouldn’t stop touching me. I just closed my eyes shut and tried to fade out. I can’t be here right now. He kept apologizing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He had to have known what he was doing to me. He had to have known that he was ruining me. With each touch he was breaking me apart. Each breath on me tore apart my old identity."

More common features of the accounts quoted above: in each case the victim knew her assailant. And none of the perpetrators was brought to justice for his crime.

The entirely understandable reluctance of rape victims to tell people about their ordeal means it is chillingly easy for our society to sweep the extent of the abuse under the cultural carpet.

In fact, despite the authorities publicly urging rape victims to seek justice, the social pressure not to be branded as a woman who was - that vile phrase - "asking for it" is often far stronger. Society plays straight into the rapists' hands, so much so, that society could be said to be conniving with the rapists, allowing them to continue raping with impunity.

Because time and time again, that is what is happening. And time and time again, the victims' voices are unheard or ignored or disbelieved.

Society is made up of people. It is you and me. Every time we pass casual judgement on a victim of rape ("What did she expect, dressed like that?"; "She threw herself at him because he was famous"; "She shouldn't have got so drunk"; "She led him on" ) we become an accessory to rape.

Seeking redress - Pursuing justice in the civil court

Those rape survivors who have watched their attacker secure an acquittal in court, or stood by feeling helpless when the Criminal Prosecution Service decided not to proceed with their case DO have another avenue. They can sue their attacker for damages. And they have a better chance of winning.

The reason is because the burden of proof is less in the civil court. In the criminal court, the defendant doesn't have to prove his innocence, the prosecution has to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that he is guilty. If any "reasonable doubt" exists, then a jury can and will acquit. In the civil court, the decision is made on "the balance of probabilities".

Recently, a woman won substantial damages against a man who had repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was 10 and 11 years-old. He had been found not guilty in the criminal court. A court case, according to a BBC report, where two of the woman's friends were forbidden to be witnesses, even though their testimonies could have been crucial to her case. Also, a previous conviction of sexual assault against a teenage girl was not mentioned in case it prejudiced the jury.

But taking the case to the civil court has its drawbacks. It may be expensive, although some lawyers may be willing to take it on under a "no win, no fee" agreement and Legal Aid is available.

The possibility of being cross-examined by one's attacker is a big off-putting factor, something which wouldn't be permitted in the criminal court.

But if the woman is brave enough to face that, she does as least have the opportunity of forcing her attacker to make some amends, if only in the form of financial compensation.

Sadly, the rapist would still escape a criminal conviction, but their victim would be able to feel that at least some semblance of justice had been done.

It was HER fault...blaming the victim

Is there any situation where a rape victim is not held in some way responsible for being attacked? If she was behaving flirtatiously, wearing revealing clothes or had some previous sexual experience, then the assumption is made over and over again that she was somehow "asking for it". If she was walking at night in a secluded spot, she was being irresponsible about her personal safety. If her rapist was her husband or boyfriend, the fact that she had had sexual relations with them in the past is taken as a blanket consent for sex in the future.

All this type of thinking does is neatly shift responsibility for the crime from the perpetrator to the victim. And this attitude seems to pervade even in situations where the victim is still a very young girl.

A particularly shocking example of this mindset is outlined by the website The F Word. The case is that of an 11 year-old girl who was allegedly raped by up to 20 young men and boys and a video of the attack then passed around the local school.

If that wasn't upsetting enough, the F Word describes how numerous press reports of the case focus on people from the girl's local community lining up to blame her (and indeed, her mother) for the attack and exonerate the men accused of carrying it out. Many of those quoted are women.

Not one of the reports, including one by that august publication, The New York Times, chose to examine how the victim might be feeling. I hope to goodness she is getting the support she will surely need to try and recover from her ordeal, although these reports cause me to seriously doubt she is.

The case, which has yet to go to trial, took place in the United States. But similar cases have happened in the UK and once again, women are just as likely as men to point the finger at the victim. In fact, according to a recent BBC report, women are, unhappily, even more likely to blame the victim than men are.

Imagine another scenario: your daughter/sister/niece is the 11 year-old girl allegedly raped by up to 20 men and boys.

Do you still believe it was somehow her fault?


A Post Script:

If you wish to sign a petition protesting about the New York Times' reporting of this case, please click here.