Inappropriate rape term criticised

Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) has observed with dismay and concern the increasingly commonplace but unacceptable use of the term ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to refer to cases of ‘defilement’ under the 2006 Sexual Offences Act.

Your reporting on the Supreme Court decision of Feb 23 on the constitutionality of the legislation we were glad to see did not headline the term, although it was quoted as a term used by the defence legal team.

The term is prejudicial, probably erroneous, potentially hurtful and certainly offensive.

Imagine the hurt a teenage victim of rape might feel when she sees headlines in the newspaper describing her experience of rape as the romantic travails of star-crossed lovers.

Our culture, through minimisation and victim-blaming, already fails to challenge sexual violence. An estimated one third of perpetrators of sexual violence have perpetrated a sexual violence crime before the age of 18.

This is one of the reasons why teenage girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. A culture whose default position on teenage sexual activity is that it cannot be abusive increases this already vulnerable group’s precarious status.

Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne, in summing up the DPP office’s extensive evidence given in the High Court case said, ‘he [Henry Mathews of the DPP’s office] indicated that age difference alone was not a definitive factor [in the decision to prosecute]. In essence, before deciding to prosecute the office would consider whether there was an element of exploitation in the situation.’

Therefore, there is the possibility and even the probability that defilement cases involving a young defendant are believed by the DPP, on the basis of available evidence, to be sexual violence cases as would be popularly understood. In which case ‘Romeo and Juliet’ seems highly inappropriate.

Clíona Saidléar

RCNI Policy and Communications Director

The Halls

Quay St

Galway