Our attitude to rape - We must stop blaming the victims

TODAY we publish a deeply disturbing survey on rape and rape victims that should make us all stop and think about how we judge women, their attackers and our society’s attitude towards what provokes sexual crimes.

The findings will make harrowing reading for those, especially women, who thought they were living in a society where justice was blind and that the state was prepared to protect all of its citizens with vigour.

Our survey reveals the shocking statistic that more than 30% of people think a victim is some way responsible if she flirts with a man or fails to say “no” clearly. In another alarm-call statistic, one in 10 thinks that a victim is entirely at fault if she has had a series of sexual partners.

Four out of 10 think a woman who flirts extensively is at least complicit, if not completely in the wrong, if she is the victim of a sex crime. In another statistic, so terribly at variance with the way we lead our lives, one in three people believe a woman is either partially or fully to blame if she wears revealing clothing.

These are startling figures and represent a substantial discouragement to any woman contemplating reporting a rape or sexual assault.

This can only be hardened by the fact that any rape-case jury will reflect a society that still holds these attitudes so chillingly revealed in our survey.

This discouragement is further hardened by broken government promises to put medical and assessment services for the victims in place around the country.

That Ireland has the lowest conviction rate for rape in Europe must be the final nail in the coffin for anyone contemplating reporting an attack.

Another disquieting finding confirms that attitudes are very slow to change and that a ground-breaking Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland report in 2002 still rings true.

Chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre Ellen O’Malley Dunlop said the findings confirmed women’s reluctance to report attacks and seek justice.

We have a very poor track record in offering support to victims of rape or other sexual attacks. Deep in our collective psyche we harbour an ambiguity that deepens a victim’s wounds and prefers not to acknowledge the evil at the centre of those attacks.

Nowhere is this unacceptable position seen more starkly than in the statistics detailing the number of women who are prepared to come forward and say that they were raped or sexually assaulted and that they want their attacker to face the consequences.

A mere one in 12 women will even tell the gardaí that they have been sexually assaulted or raped.

Of those who do not report an attack, a third remain silent because they feel that they will be held accountable. Others feel too ashamed, that they might have been in some way responsible or that they provoked and tacitly encouraged their attacker.

This tells us that we are a society that does not easily offer support, protection or comfort to a person who has been either raped or sexually attacked.

Not only does this leave an individual isolated and without the support a civilised society should offer as a matter of course, but it leaves those who carried out such attacks free to continue living their lives as if nothing had happened. They are free to attack again without hindrance or the censure of a society that finds such attacks reprehensible and unacceptable; the only one facing any consequences is the victim.

Though this situation is a result of our hush-hush allocation of blame and guilt, it cannot be what we actually mean.

Despite how things have changed, this is still, fundamentally, a caring society. A society that does not accept that this kind of violence against one of our sisters or neighbours should be brushed under the carpet.

We may sneer at what we describe as the neanderthal beliefs of other cultures where, say, the evidence of two women is required to counteract the evidence of one man or where women cannot be seen in public unless they hide themselves under a chador, but maybe we should think again.

After all, subjugation by religious practice has the same effect as subjugation by disbelief or accusations of “she was asking for it”.

In our society women can be dismissed because they are afraid to accuse, in other societies because they cannot be seen or heard. We rely on accusations of guilt or compliance, so the rest of us can pretend that there is not a great violence and darkness at the root of all these attacks. It is unimaginable that this is what we want for our society or families.

But what are we doing to create a culture where that shameful one in 12 statistic is no longer a reality?