Behaviour can increase risk of rape

IN your survey of attitudes to rape (March 26-28), people were asked whether a woman was partly, totally, or not at all to blame if she became the victim of rape in a variety of circumstances, including situations where she was drunk or drugged, walking alone in deserted places, wearing provocative clothes, had gone home alone with a man, etc.

Your accompanying comments were unbalanced. In general, the project seemed more focused on assigning blame than on reducing the incidence of this crime. You brushed aside the majority opinion which revealed that where a woman has voluntarily placed herself in a dangerous situation, she cannot escape some of the responsibility.

Yet this is routine in insurance claims. One party may be said to be 20% responsible, the other party 80%, and so on. This is applied common sense.