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9 comments from readers

David Lindsay
28 March 2008 at 16:44

The specific offences of rape, serious sexual assault and indecent assault should be abolished, since they serve only to keep on the streets people who ought to be behind bars. Instead, the sexual element should be made an aggravating factor in offences against the person generally, enabling the maximum sentence to be doubled.

That way, a few silly cases that currently come to court would not do so, while many serious cases that currently either never make it to court or end in an acquittal would at least end in a conviction for something. My jaw drops when I hear or read reports (no doubt truthful) of women with serious injuries whose assailants were never charged with anything because there was considered little or no chance of a conviction for rape. Why were they not charged with, say, grievous bodily harm? This way, they would be.

Furthermore, this would be achieved without compromising fundamental principles such as trial by jury and the burden of proof on the part of the prosecution, both of which have already been eroded far too much (i.e., particularly in the latter case, at all).

At the same time, why is no one asking why, if there are so few convictions for rape, almost nobody who makes a false allegation of rape is ever even charged with perjury (with which, given its prevalence, next to nobody is ever charged in general), or with perverting the course of justice, or with making false statements to the Police?

davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com

RHE
28 March 2008 at 20:08

Rape Crisis Centres are vital and the investment is welcome. One of the worst things about being raped, apart from the physical pain is the confusion. Without having somebody who understands you can feel like you are completely alone and terrified to tell anyone in case they minimise or even get off on your pain.

However, there can never be sufficient provision from Crisis Centres alone. They are still not pefect but the police have become much better at responding to this crisis. We need much greater effort to ensure that other public service workers are more aware of how common rape is and know how to respond appropiately and sympathetically. My experience of seeking support includes a psychiatrist who, when I disclosed that I was still being raped regularly by my boyfriend tried to send us to joint sex therapy. Another psychiatrist tried to explore why I was addicted to danger. And maternity services on three separate occassions have refused to listen when I tried to explain the long term damage his violence did to my pelvic floor muscles and consequent implications for childbirth. All of these involved "kind" people whose lack of awareness and understanding contributed to inappropriate and dangerous responses.

HECUBA
28 March 2008 at 22:29

Approximately 3-6% of rape allegations are false which are the same as for false motor insurance claims but there is no publicity about thes false claims. Instead society continues to believe vast numbers of women are making false claims a man/men has raped them.

Rape is a gendered crime and it is predominantly men who are raping women not women raping men. Rape is the easiest crime to commit with the least likelihood of male rapists being convicted. Rape must be retained because it is about male power and control over women and it is used to keep women subordinate to men.

The reasons why so many rapists are not even charged let alone convicted are because at each stage women rape survivors are failed by the justice system, the police and society. Women rape survivors have to prove they are 'credible witnesses' to their own rapes. Alleged rapists are still widely seen as respectable men. Society still refuses to hold men who commit violence against women accountable for their actions.

As evidenced by the above commentator when she tried to obtain expert help and support, she was told both she and her rapist should attend joint sex therapy!! This man was raping and sexually abusing the woman but instead the pyschiatrist refused to see the truth. Even when experts refuse to see and accept the reality what can we expect from the general public when they are constantly fed myths that women are innate liars and it is a man's right to demand and expect sexual access to any woman.

Women's right of sexual autonomy and sexual rights are still a dream unfortunately and until such time as we accept that rape does exist and we live in rape culture nothing will change. For more information on statistics concerning supposed false rape claims see http://www.truthaboutrape.co.uk

Grahame Priest
31 March 2008 at 18:00

Hecuba, I agree with much of what you say, especially concerning the lamentable conviction rate. As a male who has never had to endure the ordeal of rape, I cannot begin to have experience that compares to female commentators on the subject. However I feel though there are some inaccuracies - or at least differing interpretations that bear considering.

I'm not aware that only 3-6% of rape claims are false, nor would I rely on a site that has an agenda to promote for my statistics. Instead I'll cite the Guardian article by crime reporter Sarah Hall where she presents researched figures of between 10% and 41% for false claims. There's some American research I've seen by noted criminologists who concluded between 25% and 30% was a realistic assessment for false claims. I can't find the American reference. The Guardian one is here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/apr/07/ukcrime.sarahhall

On the subject of false claims, whichever statistics you believe, there is undoubtedly a very significant level of them. This presents a problem for the police because one starts the process of prosecution knowing that there is a relatively high statistical possibility (albeit not probability) that any claim may be a false one. From the jury's perspective, they not only have to consider that truth but also consider the fact that if the claim was indeed malicious, the penalties for wrongfully convicting on perjured evidence will probably be disastrous for the person who has been falsely accused. It is simply not good enough to claim, as some do, that an accusation must be believed because no one would claim such a thing out of malice, or that such claims are rare. Although we might wish that were the case, it simply isn't true. In any realistic debate about rape, which is such an emotive issue for so many, we have to consider the issue of false claims and why they're made. If we don't, we'll hamstring any attempts to rectify the lamentably low conviction rate. And I agree that without getting the conviction rate up, we can't realistically deter those who would commit this vile offence.

Of course, this isn't the only factor contributing to low conviction rates. For example, I'd argue that policy-makers have failed to frame laws and proscribe sanctions that fit the offences, which juries can feel comfortable with – because they clearly aren't comfortable at the moment. Then there are whole areas of gender abuse which the government conveniently ignores, quite hypocritically and at the cost of a great deal of unnecessary suffering.

Cazkitten
03 April 2008 at 21:19

"Grahame" - you're an idiot.

The Home Office - which hardly has the kind of radical feminist agenda you seem to feveredly imagine - show that only 3% of rape allegations are false. This is robust research and I know what I am talking about, so you would only be picking holes in it based on your agenda. Google "gap or a chasm?" to get some actual information, not misogynist "research" that stands up to no scrutiny whatsoever.

Grahame Priest
04 April 2008 at 18:50

CazKitten. Whilst I fully expected someone to come back and criticise on the basis that I hadn't read the same reports that they had, I didn't expect anyone to assert I am an 'idiot' and a 'misogynist'. Emoting has its place, but that's hardly in the context of constructive and rational (?) debate.

Thanks for the link to the report. Firstly, a clarification. Contrary to the impression you gave, the report cited wasn't produced by the Home Office itself, but by the “Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit” of the London Metropolitan University, for the Home Office. I haven't been able to establish whether the report's conclusions have been accepted. That said, it's cogent and interesting enough to merit reading.

On the subject of false allegations in the report.... The report itself says that the number of allegations dismissed as false by the police is either 8% or 10% (depending on which page you read). The study sample was 2,643. Of these, 1817 cases (table 4.2 on p40) provided sufficient data to break down into research categories. Within these cases, 216 cases were classified as false by the police purely at the initial investigation stage - which is actually an 11.88% false claim rate. The figure of 3% you cite is only derived if you exclude from the police's findings those cases where they concluded evidentially that the alleged victim was 'probably' lying, or there were other reasons (such as a history of prior complaints) where the police concluded the alleged victim was likely to have lied.

There were some pretty appalling reasons given for lying (box A, p48) such as trying to hide consensual sex with another man from husbands or partners (8 cases) and occasions such as where a man had had sex with a woman but ignored her the next day. It's interesting to note that out of the 53 cases where the victim actually admitted to making up the allegation, only 2 cases were referred for prosecution for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Most would agree that deliberately lying to get a man convicted of an offence that will ruin his life and send him to prison for a long time, for reasons as spurious as ignoring her the next day for example, is a pretty serious offence. Yet even if one assumes both cases reported for prosecution actually resulted in conviction, one can extrapolate that the conviction rate for this offence is actually under 1%.

Whilst we could say that the issue of false claims should be ignored in our drive to increase successful convictions for rape, and whilst we could all massage statistics to support a point of view, the fact remains that buried inside all claims for rape, there are a great many false ones. The 11.8% figure I've calculated from the report quoted only includes those instances where the police had good reason to believe the claims were false. Buried in the remainder will be other instances where innocent men will have had there lives ruined. This shouldn't though detract from the issue that rape is a real problem for far too many women, and in all too many instances, remains unpunished. In any debate on rape legislation and successful enforcement, we need to have a practical debate that acknowledges all of the problems associated with increasing prosecution rates, not just the ones that meet our needs for justice at an emotion level or suits our individual brand of gender politics.

Gwyn
30 June 2008 at 04:13

It should also be pointed out that the report "Gap or a chasm" does not include accusations that have proven to be false after conviction.

I should also point out that the 6% conviction rate applies to those reported. Of those taken to trial there is about a 40-45% conviction rate, less but not entirely dissimilar to that for murder trials. People sometimes get confused about this.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200203/ldhansrd/v...

(2 Jun 2003 : Column 1068, About 2/3 rds of the way down in the debate).

Rape and false accusations are serious issues seriously effecting lives. People have the obligation to resist polemics and the bad use of statistics if they chose to publically debate these issues

Gwyn
30 June 2008 at 04:16

should read "Rape and false rape accusations..." to avoid ambiguity

skilledhelp
28 September 2008 at 23:49

i am a victim of rape, i do not drink i do not go out, i do not flirt or dress improperly. even if i did all of the above, i still did not deserve to be raped. The perpetrator broke into my house at 2am in the morning, his opening statement was hed come to kill me. I belived him, my ordeal was horrific, raped twice and fighting to survive. i am still receiving support my life is a mess, i had to move home tell my parents deal with things, only other rape victims would understand. women that falsly report rape should be named and shamed, and then police should deal with them appropriatly. The men who commit rape should have harsher sentances, this will reflect to the public that rape is not acceptable, its strange that we teach from the age of 11 up to age 16 about the consequenses ot unprotected sex, drugs and their effects, the effects of drinking, substance abuse and smoking. Why do we not educate them about rape and the consequenses, target young men that this behaviour is not acceptable, to the young girls that they can say no and no means no, we need to educate youngsters at school age, maybe then in twenty years time or so rape will go down , because we have educated the younger generation that we will not accept or tolerate rape.