False mollycoddle allegations really atomic human activity 18n’t that common.
Belief that ‘most gets of enchant be saturnine’ is a myth that organisations like Rape Crisis and expiry Violence Against Women present long been campaigning to dispel.
But assumed attack allegations really aren’t that common.
Given the malestream media fixation with the issue, you could be forgiven for believing that ridiculous intrusion allegations are a widespread problem and our courts are ridden with prosecutions against those that concord made them.
However, a taradiddle released by the upside Prosecution usefulness ( round) last week has found that at that place are a mere two hatful prosecuted for this villainy each month.
Two people a month.
Compare this with the 332 prosecutions that are secured against rapists each month and the pervasiveness, or lack at that placeof, of the problem is put in virtually sort of perspective.
In his foreword to the sketch, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer said: “Victims of rape and domestic furiousness must not be deterred from inform the abuse they have suffered.
“In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes that are associated with these cases.
“One such(prenominal) misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife.
“This report presents a more accurate picture.”
The report, which examined a 17-month period over 2011 and 2012, revealed that while there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape during that time, there were single 35 prosecutions for making a false allegation of rape.
Of those few false allegations that were made, approximately half involved young people aged 21 and under, while others involved people with mental health issues.
Indeed, scrutiny of the case studies of those included in the report reveals them to be vulnerable individuals coping with complex cordial and emotional issues, such as alcoholism, homelessness, and coming to grips with their sexuality.
Don’t cop me wrong, this vulnerability is not an excuse for their actions.
But let’s be honest, this representation of someone who falsely accuses someone else of rape stands in stark contrast to the image of the conniving fantasists that the media would have us believe are making false accusations – and a spoof of a heinous crimes.
Another important discovery revealed in this report is that victims are often targeted by other rapists and abusers once they have been subjected to an assault – perhaps because they are more vulnerable.
This means that individuals who claim to have been a victim of more than one rape or other violence should not be discounted or viewed with suspicion.
In fact the opposite is true.
Based on data released by the Ministry of referee in January, it is estimated that there were approximately 97,000 serious sexual assaults or rapes in the UK in the previous 12 months.
Police records, however, show that notwithstanding 16,000 rapes were reported for that same period.
So if the number of actual rapes far outnumbers the number of people who are convicted for rape, surely it makes sense that accusations of false rape must far outnumber those who are convicted for making a false allegation?
As feminist blogger glosswatch rightly points out, this rationale is flawed.
Not only is a false rape allegation, exactly because it is an allegation, investigated by the governance in a way that an unreported rape is not.
But, as glosswatch highlights, “we see broad cultural trends of rape apologism – from UniLAD to George Galloway to rape jokes on T-shirts – reaching out to the minds of investigators and juries, we’ve never yet seen an equivalent take of sympathy and amusement regarding false rape claims.”
Indeed, so entrench is the purification of rape apologism that even media coverage of the recent CPS report by one apparently impartial countersign provider was unbelievably disingenuous.
Rather than highlighting the small number of false rape allegations recorded by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), an article in the BBC’s Newsbeat only encouraged victim-blaming paranoia.
Newsbeat whizz with a piece entitled ‘False rape allegations ‘devastating”.
It is just this kind of mythologising of false rape claims that Keir Starmer is trying to track out.
He told the Guardian: “Because people recognise the devastating effect of false allegations and because they perceive there to be more false allegations than this report would suggest there are, arguably they adopt a fabian approach.
“If [that] leads to a more rigorous test being apply when people report rape or domestic violence, hence that can lead to injustice for victims.”
And it is not just in the reporting of a rape, but in every stratum of the legal process that victims of rape seem to face a ‘more rigorous test’.
It has emerged that police at a specialist unit for handling sexual assaults put closet on victims to drop claims in order to aid pluck up rates.
And Frances Andrade, who killed herself after giving evidence against her childhood abuser, was tagged a “fantasist” who was “largely living in a romance life” by his defence lawyers and left her feeling as though she was the one on trial.
Sadly, I suspect that Frances Andrade’s experience is familiar to many of those who have pursued convictions against their accusers and I fear that for as long as a culture of rape apologism is tolerated, it will continue to be so.
So we won’t tolerate it.
Materials taken from Womens Views on News
No comments:
Post a Comment