Simon Bradshaw

To take your questions in reverse order:

- I've not seen any figures re male rape.

- It's very hard to say what the underlying incidence of rape is. The lower bound is the number of convictions, in which case you have to assume that 94% of the women who make rape accusations are doing so falsely or at least in circumstances so ambiguous as to consent as to make it doubtful that there was rape. The upper bound is the total number of accusations multiplied by a factor representing the number of women who for one reason or another don't even make an accusation. I've seen figures suggesting that perhaps 1 in 4 women are raped at some point, so in the UK that would be in the order of 50,000 to 100,000 rapes a year. That seems to be backed up by this analysis.

- Alternative systems? We could have, say, a court comprising three judges, at least one but not more than two to be female, sitting without a jury. Rather than give a simple guilty/not guilty verdict, they would have to give a reasoned judgment (as in civil cases) so as to allow any appeal to fully consider the weight given to various aspects of evidence. All such judges would have to be trained and certified as specially qualified to understand the issues arising in sexual offences cases.

From:

assume that 94% of the women who make rape accusations are doing so falsely or at least in circumstances so ambiguous

How many of reported rapes are clear rapes - e.g. woman attacked whilst walking home - compared to date rape type situations where the victim knows the defendant?

I'm guessing that stranger rape is relatively rare but has a much higher conviction rate than date rape because it is far clearer that a crime has been committed. Lumping all alleged rapes together is misleading because circumstances vary dramatically.

I dislike the idea of judge only trials in general and I specifically dislike a specified number of female being on the bench*. If male judges cannot be trusted to convict guilty men, why can female judges be trusted to release innocent men?

A judge must be (or at least strive to be) impartial to gender / religion etc and base their judgments on the evidence. Saying that a particular type of judge cannot be trusted to be impartial in particular type of case undermines the whole system.

*Note: We should have an equal number of female and male judges overall which would generally give you your desired mix most of the time.

From:

Yes, to take your last point, we should. And from the way the legal training process is going, in about thirty years' time we might have such equality. But until then, in order that justice not only be done but be seen to be done, in cases involving sex offences it may well be prudent to ensure diversity on any panel of judges, if we went down that route.

(The Youth Court already has this policy, by the way.)

From:

Date rapes can be very, very real rapes, and I can personally attest. They are also the vast majority: stranger rape is so much rarer that it's almost negligible. (In fact, it is a little known fact that it's young men, not young women, who are mostly at risk when walking alone at night.)

The problem is, they are very hard to prove.

From:

I wasn't implying that date rape is anyway less a crime or a violation of a individual's body. Merely noting that with sex between to two adult who know each other, it is much hard to establish that a crime has taken place.

In relation to rape trials (or lack of them), it is proving a crime has taken place that is the major problem with obtaining convictions.

From:

purpletigron.livejournal.com

Just skimmed the rest of the thread. I find the point about differing kinds of responsibility is very useful - for just about any crime. I believe that someone who commits a crime can be held 100% responsible for making the choice to commit the criminal actions, yet the victim could _simultaneously_ bear some level and (distinct) kind of responsibility for not taking reasonable precautions to avoid the situation, and other agencies could _also_ bear some level and kind responsibility too e.g. the guardians who brought them both up etc. So I think that advising potential victims of _reasonable_ ways to reduce their probability of becoming actual victims should be complete separate from holding criminals 100% responsible for their actions (unless e.g. mentally incompetent).

To be specific, we all have a responsibility to understand, seek and apply full consent to sexual acts.

Supplemental question to my original list ... are there any working examples of alternative judicial systems which achieve higher reliable conviction rates for rape anywhere?

From:

See my most recent post, which links to a comprehensive study of this for 11 European countries.

It looks like France has a very high conviction rate (nearly 30%), although rather frustratingly the French legal system was not very co-operative in helping the researchers investigate why this might be.

From:

robert-jones.livejournal.com

The latest British Crime Survey suggests that 0.3% of women aged between 16 and 59 were raped in the last year (see table 3.11 on page 67). Ignoring age variation, and generalising from England and Wales to the UK, that would mean that roughly 90,000 women a year are raped.

Edited Date: 2010-02-15 12:01 pm (UTC)

From:

I suspect that a lot of the responses to that questionnaire are very dependent on exactly what question was asked.

If the questions had been of the form "A woman wearing a short skirt is raped by a man. Is it the fault of: (a) the man (b) the woman" then you'd see a lot more (a) than the current poll suggests.

From:

"Almost three-quarters of women said if a rape victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker's house for a drink."

The wording here is ambiguous: "blame" and "responsibility".

If a female friend tended to dress provocatively while binge drinking in bars, then go home with male strangers and drink vodka in their beds... well, in a strictly *practical* sense, I would "blame" her for being stupid, and tell her to "take responsiblity" for herself, just as if aged friends were always leaving the backdoor unlocked and valuables on the kitchen table.

However, that doesn't absolve from *moral* blame and responsibility the criminals who are waiting to take advantage of other people's foolishness.

Practical and moral are different. To which do the survey answers relate?

From:

That's an interesting distinction. If I leave my handbag open, and lose all my credit cards, I would accept responsibility for my stupidity, but would still want the thief to be prosecuted if caught. I think there is a definite analogy here - the 'blame the victim' issue cuts both ways, because if taken to its extreme extent, it actually disempowers women by suggesting that they're incapable of taking responsibility for their behaviour in a world that is, fundamentally, unsafe. The problem is that the blame seems often to be primarily attached to the victim and not to the attacker, which I obviously consider disproportionate.

From:

Absolutely - people seem to think it's a zero-sum situation, that if you assign any responsibility to the victim then you remove it from the attacker, which is clearly a terrible idea.

From:

..when in fact it's two entirely different kinds of responsibility. Damned English language.

From:

I tend to agree with you. However, I would want to see a study comparing scenarios, i.e. what about a young man with wearing the wrong football colours in the wrong bar etc

Also, I suspect that the surveys reflect an attitude in the wider population that crime is like a force of nature - of course your car gets robbed if you leave the window open etc.

From:

>that crime is like a force of nature

That relates to your earlier point that attributing responsibility to the victim removes blame from the attacker - which as Andrew rightly says, is preposterous. Even when a person is pinpointed, there's an element of that in the 'he couldn't help himself' defence, as though all men are completely lacking in agency.

(Ironically, all this went through my mind earlier on, when, wearing my pyjamas (I'm ill at the moment) I had to go and speak to the driver of our central heating oil lorry...in my night attire, with a strange bloke, in the middle of nowhere. It did cross my mind as to how this might look in a court if worst came to worst. Driver was deeply apologetic at hauling me out of bed and not a crazed rapist, happily).

From:

And the thing is that 99.99% of the time you'd be fine doing that. Heck, I can probably add another decimal point or two onto that. As has been pointed out elsewhere most rapes aren't actually by strangers, which makes worrying about it in general counterproductive.

There's a very good article here that makes it clear that total stranger rape is a tiny amount of the problem - most of it is of people that are known, frequently after intoxicants:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/

From:

I see a difference between crimes against the person and crimes relating to property. Our legal system already regards the former as inherently of a different and in effect more serious nature; that is why we prosecute people who injure someone in a fight for ABH rather than criminal damage!

Or put it this way: you have rather more rights than your handbag.

From:

unwholesome-fen.livejournal.com

Some of the social attitudes are deeply embedded in the language. Consider the phrase "dressed provocatively", for example. It kind of implies by analogy that the way someone dresses is somehow a provocation (in the way that insulting someone can be considered provocation for them punching you in response).

From:

Well, in the fencing sense, both are provoking a response.

From:

unwholesome-fen.livejournal.com

That depends what you mean by a response. It isn't provoking any action on the part of the other person, though clearly it might provoke a biochemical response in them.

From:

swisstone.livejournal.com

The survey that hit the headlines last year talked a lot about 'contributing factors'. It was then spun in the news as if thinking, for instance, that being drunk was a contributing factor in someone getting raped meant that the people thinking that believed the drunk person was in some way responsible for being raped. But there is a huge gap between contributing factors and responsibility. Do I think that, in the case of the woman who was gang-raped, her admitting to her online chat contact that she had gang-rape fantasies was a contributing factor to him thinking it was all right to get his mates round to have sex with her? Probably yes. Does that mean that I think she is to blame for them doing this? Absolutely not.

From:

Total agreement.

From:

lebeautemps.livejournal.com

Horrid. And the low conviction rate (together with poor police handling)is barrier to reporting rape to the police in the first place. So that's 6% of those who actually reported it.

As for the jury, I'm wondering how much of the jury position is a kneejerk reaction to the stress of being involved in a rape trial, rather than their actual considered personal opinion.

From:

IIRC women on juries are very reluctant to convict a man because they think, "That could be my dad/brother/boyfriend/son".

From:

The 6% figure ...

Is that 6% of reported rapes end in conviction or 6% of rapes that go to trial?

I'm assuming that it is 6% of reported rapes, in which case it offers no guidance on how effective juries are.

From:

6% of reported accusations of rape.

But if you think this offers no guidance as to jury effectiveness, you have to believe that up to 94% of accusations are false or misguided, or relate to circumstances where there is no other evidence. That, I would suggest, is simply not credible.

From:

bellinghman.livejournal.com

Not all reported accusations go to trial, though. There will be some (many?) where there is little or no objective evidence, and no prosecution goes ahead. That's not quite the same as if 6% of cases where prosecutors thought there was sufficient evidence to convict were then rejected by the jury.

Accepted, that there might be a proportion of cases where prosecutors base whether to send the case to trial on their expectation of how a jury will react. But we have little or no data here of how many of these there are.

From:

Well, this is kind of my point - see my comment to

purpletigron above. The figures I've seen suggest that around 15% of accusations get as far as a trial, so a conviction rate of 6% of accusations corresponds to one of about 40% of cases that go to trial. That's still worrying low, if the CPS only proceed with a case where there is seen to be a strong prospect of obtaining a conviction.

What we see is a two-stage problem. Firstly, there is a significant barrier to getting complaints taken to trial, if only 15% are. This may be due in part to complaints not being taken seriously, but I suspect there is also an element of pessimism on behalf of the CPS in terms of the likelihood of securing a conviction, and the risk of putting a complainant through a harrowing trial only to see an acquittal.

Secondly, there is the trial itself. It is hard to know what is the underlying cause as jury research always has been, and remains, stricly forbidden. (The Lord Chief Justice reiterated this, in another context, only the other month). But surveys like the one reported here do suggest that societal attitudes and assumptions may be part of the reason for the low conviction rate.

From:

I'm not sure of your logic here.

If 100 rapes are reported but only 10 go to trial, a overall conviction rate of 6% has very little to do with juries.

Finding a way of getting the bulk of the other 90% to trial would seem a more sensible route than blaming juries.

From:

It's about 100/15/6, so 40% of rape trials lead to a conviction. See the numbers I quote in my reply to

maviscruet; that's still half the national average.

But the two are not independent. I would put it to you that a low conviction rate of cases that go to trial is itself one of the factors that deters the CPS from bringing a prosecution. Aside from the rather harsh fact that trials are very expensive, the CPS will genuinely not want to subject someone who has been through a very unpleasant experience to the further ordeal of a rape trial without a good prospect of securing a conviction at the end.

From:

alexmc.livejournal.com

Nonsense.

In 94% of the cases the jury could not decide that they should convict. That is the only deduction you can make.

You can't go around avoiding a jury just because they don't come up with the answer you want.

From:

alexmc.livejournal.com

OK - my maths is wrong. Not 94%.

From:

Well, if you don't see the problem, look at some of the other data.

On average, 80% of cases that go to trial result in a conviction.

For rape trials, the figure drops to 40%.

Clearly, even when the CPS feels it has a strong enough case to bring a prosecution (and the test is meant to be the same for all types of crime) a jury is three times more likely to acquit in a rape trial (60% vs 20%) than for crimes on average.

Do you still think that this tells us nothing? Do you honestly believe that this does not itself feed into the CPS decision on whether to bring a prosecution at all?

From:

maviscruet.livejournal.com

Out of interest - what are the conversation rates - so to speak - on other types of crime?

And what happens if a case of rape is reported but the a conviction on a lesser charge occurs?

From:

http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/

Some statistics from last year.

In 2006/07 - the first full operating year for statutory Charging arrangements across England and Wales - 348,700 cases were charged and of these 269,800 (77.4%) resulted in a conviction. By 2008/09, this number had increased to 357,800 cases and 289,000 (80.7%) resulted in a conviction.

So, some 80% of cases that go to trial result in a conviction. From the figures I quote in another reply, that means that for rape trials the conviction rate is half the national average.

From:

We are still labouring under a system of socialisation that tells young women that they are primarily responsible for male sexual behaviour -- teen girls are still being warned that men 'can't control themselves' and that girls are courting trouble if they 'lead him on'. Basically, we are training women to collude in a system which allows some men to opt out of behaving considerately and decently. What we need is to adjust this radically, to remove this layer of female responsibility - which is an artefact of misogyny (not just Christian, either: you find this blaming of women for male sexuality more or less everywhere).

Edited Date: 2010-02-15 11:38 am (UTC)

From:

It is particularly prevalent in parts of the Islamic world (not all - I didn't encounter it in Kazakhstan). Egypt was especially irksome in that respect: when, wearing a long sleeved blouse and a headscarf, one is confronted by a complete stranger who asks 'So, can we fuck now?' on a batting average of 3 times a day, there would seem to be some sort of cultural problem.

It's an unfortunate chicken and egg in terms of responsibility: you can't tell women not to look after themselves, because this often is a dangerous world. OTOH, as the cliche goes, stopping rape is easy - don't rape people.

From:

coalescent.livejournal.com

This appears to be the summary report for the survey in question. I would like to see more details about the methodology, though, and some statistical analysis. (Is 71% of 700 vs 57% of 300 a statistically significant difference?)

From:

Thanks for finding that. I don't think the diffence you cite is statistically that significant; what concerns me a little more is why a supposedly random survey has twice as many male participants as female, and whether that is somehow skewing the data. It seems to have been an online survey, so there may have been some self-selection effect.

From:

coalescent.livejournal.com

Yes, that made raise an eyebrow as well.

From:

despotliz.livejournal.com

I'd been looking for the questions earlier and couldn't find them, good find. Numbers I nicked from this table and my really rusty stats suggest that for 300 people out of a pop of, say, 5million (rough estimate for number of women in London), you're 95% confident of being within 5%, and for 700 95% confident of being within 3.5%, so they are far enough apart it might be significant. Big red flag over your sampling method though.

Not that it makes the stats less depressing whatever the sampling is, because anyone thinking it's not rape if a man makes his partner have sex when they don't want to if one person too many.

From:

I do not doubt for a moment that rape is a deeply cultural phenomenon and so it the percentage of convictions.

But it is also a very very hard crime to prove, because the act itself is not a crime, the things going on in the mind of the two people involved make it so. And juries have no real way to look into their minds. If she says she wasn't consenting, and he says he thought she was, and there are no witnesses (and almost never there are) and no clear medical evidence (one hopes, because struggling with your attacker to get said medical evidence is not a course of action I would reccomend), then the jury has to think "in dubio pro reo".

Which explains in part the small number of cases that go to trial. No doubt there are still plenty of police and prosecutors that tend to believe that women make stuff up just because, but a lot of them just tend to take to trial only the cases where they think they have *some* chance of conviction.

The only solution I can see, and I realize this is not something that is probably feasible in English law, is going through a civil lawsuit for damages instead, where the burden of proof would be lower, and the victims would get some sort of justice (in the form a whopping great roll of cash for physical and moral damages) that would go *some* way to making them feel vindicated.

I would also welcome a demystification of rape. It's a horrible and traumatic thing to happen to you, but it's not a fate worse than death. Once my mom told me "I'd rather somebody killed me than rape me," and I looked at her and said, "Excuse me? I certainly wouldn't!"

Women should be less terrorized with rape, and taught that it's a survivable, albeit traumatic experience. It would make women freer to move and act, and probably facilitate their getting over it, too.

From:

Yes, I agree with that. I stress that I speak from the perspective of someone who has never been raped, however. I have been sexually assaulted in what I regard as a minor way (i.e. I had to think for a minute to recall specific incidents). On balance, I'd rather be raped if it involved no other injuries than have, say, a ruptured spleen or a bust jaw (rape does, however, sometimes involve considerable violence). But because cultures attach such significance to The Sexual Act - ta daaa! - it has got mystified.

I have technically been assaulted by a man, but whenever I'm asked whether I have been, I never manage to remember this incident, because I regard it as a fight (it was a punch-up with some arsehole who was on his way back from the Heiselberg stadium disaster). I would be interested to know if this is a common male perspective or not - fights are somehow different.

Back to mystification - this is one reason why, from a personal perspective, I am reluctant to include 'sleeping with someone when you don't feel like it' as rape, or at least some kind of personal violation, an attitude with which some feminists would take issue. I have, on occasion, done this with partners, not dates (although there hasn't been any particular pressure brought to bear) and it comes into the category of: cooking dinner when you don't feel like it/going to work when you don't....well, you get the picture. Life's full of compromise.

From:

My own experience of rape was a date rape. It wasn't terribly traumatic, but it was deeply unpleasant on several levels. The worst was that it took me several years to call it rape - I simply chalked it down as a very, very bad date. I knew all along that at one point I had very clearly thought "At this point I either kick, scream and take the chance that he'll rape me, or convince myself that I really want it and talk him into using a condom at least." But I thought, well, it might count as rape for me, but he might just not have realized what was going on.

Then I started to remember some things, for example trying to reason with him, and other facts that I won't go into here - but only then I realized, with a sinking feeling, that no, I had convinced myself that it wasn't rape because it made me feel better.

I am pretty sure he didn't see it as rape, among other things because he called me back for a second date, but I do remember that I was incredulous that he had had the gall to call me, so even then there was a mismatch of impressions.

Where was the rape then? In my mind, but not at every point. What jury on Earth could have convicted him? Not even the one in my mind. Which is why I never went to the Police. That, and the "I was drunk, it was two years ago, I don't remember the day, I don't remember his name, and he left me his number."

From:

And btw - I knew already that women are less sympathetic towards rape victims than men. I might have read it in Joanna Burke's "Rape", or it might have been some legal drama.

The rationalization is that women need to think that the woman is responsible because they need to think "It can't happen to me; I wouldn't do anything that stupid."

From:

ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com

I'd agree . And ironically the woman I know who's most vocal in blaming rape victims is the person with the riskiest lifestyle in my group. It's definitely about saying "it can't happen to me".

From:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8519138.stm

Particularly the final sentence.

From: