Rape Crisis Scotland

Guest blog : “Just say no”: MP blames girls for childhood sexual abuse, by Emma Ritch

Nadine Dorries, MP for mid-Bedfordshire, has raised eyebrows recently with her proposal that girls, and not boys, should receive mandatory abstinence-based sex education. The notion that girls should act as the gatekeepers for sexual interaction is as retrograde as it is absurd, and her bill has attracted derision from those working with young people, sexual and reproductive health organisations, and opposition MPs`. Chris Bryant MP described it as “the daftest piece of legislation I have ever seen brought forward”.

It is easy to see Dorries, who operates in what might charitably be called the margins of Westminster, as a caricature of an anti-choice, deeply sexist political operator. Her opposition to abortion and comprehensive sex education takes place amid a whirlwind of misrepresentations and evasions. Her demagoguery has undeniable impact, though. Despite her failure to present a shred of evidence in its support, her claim that seven year olds are being taught to put condoms on bananas was faithfully reproduced across a whole range of media outlets.

Her appearance on yesterday’s Vanessa show went beyond pseudo-science, though, in making the outrageous claim that abstinence education could reduce child sexual abuse. According to Dorries, “some of the evidence that I’ve heard is that if a stronger just say no message was given to children in school that there might be an impact on sex abuse. Because a lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don’t realise until later that that was a wrong thing to do.”

The idea that girls are somehow responsible for the violence and abuse perpetrated against them is not a new one. We see this attitude represented in the lawyer who described gang rape victims as ‘Lolitas’ , in the Glasgow City Councillor who said a nine year old rape victim ‘wanted it to happen’ , and in a recent NY Times story which detailed the makeup and clothing an eleven year old gang rape victim wore.

Blaming children, as Dorries does, by suggesting that they are colluding in their own abuse, ignores the reality that responsibility must rest solely on the shoulders of those who perpetrate sexual violence against children. These toxic attitudes pollute our criminal justice system, our political discourse, and our understanding as a society about the catastrophic harms that child abuse does to individuals, families, and communities.

Dorries, a member of the body that frames and shapes the law on sexual violence in England and Wales, must surely consider whether her ideological blinkers allow her to be an effective representative for the abused children, and adult survivors of child abuse, in mid-Bedfordshire.

Prejudicial attitudes - from one who should know better

The past week has seen yet another rape in Glasgow city centre, this time of a woman who was assaulted by three men, having been dragged into a back lane after a night out with friends.

The outrage and shock which followed the assault has been compounded by remarks made by Conservative MSP Bill Aitken, in the course of a conversation with the Sunday Herald. Far from expressing concern for the woman’s welfare, or that she could be seized so brazenly, Mr Aitken’s immediate focus centred on her behaviour and the suspicions he ascribed to her geographical location. He was far more inclined to wonder if she had been engaged in prostitution than to worry that she had been very seriously sexually assaulted. When challenged later about what he had said, Mr Aitken at first tried to deny his remarks, but when faced with a transcript, later felt compelled to apologize to the woman and her family.

Sadly his instinct and willingness to call into question the behaviour of a woman who was raped rather than to question what her attackers might have done is very common indeed. Such prejudices are frequently seen in the course of rape trials and are often a major factor in the decisions of the great many women who feel that they cannot report the appalling sexual assaults committed against them. When cases do get to court, the very same prejudices can seriously hamper the justice process for women.

However, where we do not expect to find these views are on the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and when we hear them from the mouth of the Convenor of the Committee himself, we really have to ask ourselves if that really is the best we can do for the women of Scotland?

The contested 3% conviction rate for rape in Scotland – what is the real story?

Recent weeks have seen public figures such as the Justice Secretary and the Solicitor General describing the often quoted 3% conviction rate for rape as misleading and untrue. An alternative and significantly higher figure of 33% is quoted instead. Who is right?

The 3% conviction rate measures the proportion of rapes reported to the police which lead to a conviction. The figure is derived from the Scottish Government’s two statistical bulletins – Recorded Crime in Scotland and Criminal Proceedings in Scottish Courts. The 3% conviction rate is calculated by taking the number of reported rapes (for 2008-2009), which was 821, and the number of convictions – 25 – and working out the percentage between these figures – 3%. Most reported rapes don’t lead to a prosecution – from the Scottish Government’s own figures only 10.1% lead to a prosecution. This means that the vast majority of rapes reported to the police in Scotland do not reach court.

It is important, however, to give two health warnings on these figures: firstly, the figures in the two statistical bulletins from which the 3% conviction rate is derived measure slightly different things: the police statistics in the Recorded Crime bulletin measure by offence whereas the court statistics in the Criminal Proceedings in Scottish Courts bulletin measure by offender. In some circumstances one offender will be responsible for more than one offence, so in this sense the two sets of figures are not directly comparable. Secondly, court statistics are recorded by main offence, so in cases where rape is not the main offence, i.e. where the main offence is murder, a conviction will not be included in the overall number of rape convictions. Although the latter scenario does not cover many rape related offences in Scotland (we do not have significant numbers of joint murder & rape cases each year in Scotland) it is clear that these do represent genuine caveats to the reliability of the 3% figure. However, there is no other source of data available which tells us how many rapes reported to the police lead to a conviction.

The Scottish Government and the Crown Office, when challenging the 3% conviction rate, assert that 33% of rapes indicted to court lead to a conviction. It is crucial to note here that they are not comparing like with like, in that they are taking as their starting point cases indicted to court, not cases reported to the police. That is not to say it is not a valid figure, but it is talking about something completely different. It is important to bear in mind here that only around 10% of cases reported to the police ever reach court – what the 33% conviction rate figure is referring to is what happens to small proportion of cases which reach court, not what happens to all reported rapes.

Why does this matter? The rape crisis movement has at times been criticized for highlighting the very low level of rapes reported to the police which lead to a conviction. Concern has been expressed that focusing on this conviction rate will deter rape survivors from coming forward and reporting their experience. It is important to acknowledge the significant progress that has been made by the Crown Office in how rape is prosecuted, including the introduction of the National Sex Crimes Unit and specialist teams within the fiscal service across the country. It is to be hoped that these positive changes will lead to an increase in our conviction rate, or at the very least an improvement in survivors’ experience of the justice system.

Rape Crisis Scotland believes however that to focus only on what happens to cases which are indicted for court misses entirely the experiences of the vast majority of survivors reporting rape in our country. Is it really of no consequence that around 90% of those reporting rape will never see their case reach court? Is this not a matter of concern which we must focus our attention on? Or do we really think its ok to just write off the vast majority of reported rapes as unprosecutable? Does this not signal something wrong with our justice system if this is the case?

A final question: how can it be after decades of concern about legal responses to rape that we can’t even reliably give the most basic data of how many complaints of rape lead to a conviction?

Damned if she does - and damned if she doesn't

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a story comes along and blows away any wild ideas you might have about justice being served in rape cases or some hope that the system itself might be in possession of a wider understanding of the complex pressures faced by complainers. Last week, a woman in Powys, North Wales was jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice following a series of events which reveal nothing more criminal than an entirely natural desperation to stop a prosecution she felt she could not pursue.

Having been pressurized to withdraw an allegation of (six incidences) of rape she had made against her husband by the man she accused and his sister, she decided she could not proceed with the case, and would not be persuaded by police and prosecutors to go on with it. Her initial attempt to stop proceedings cut no ice with police and prosecutors who insisted they would go on with the case, leaving the woman feeling the only option she had left to her was to claim the allegations had been false. The woman was then charged with perverting the course of justice and in her subsequent desperation to avoid prosecution herself admitted this retraction had been false and that the original rape allegations were true.

As a consequence, the tables were turned, and with a perverseness unique to the justice system, it was decreed that a crime had indeed been committed – and that she was its perpetrator. In place of the justice she sought and all rape survivors deserve, this woman received a jail sentence, with criticism and punishment taking the place of the support and respect she should have had.

Rape crisis centres meet and receive calls from many women who face just this difficulty – the feeling that they just cannot go on with a court case, but feeling also that the only way out of the prosecution is to say they made it up . For many women the prospect of the ordeal of the rape case – or their uncertainty about being able for what ever reason to see it through – pose a risk not worth taking – so they do not report rape at all.

And who can wonder? The trajectory of a rape trial is so often an arrow fired off with the faintest hope of really reaching its elusive target – justice for one of the most damaging crimes of all – but every chance of trailing in its wake a woman’s privacy and dignity or any hope of justice for the crime committed against her. The removal of autonomy and control is one of the defining features of rape, and what makes it so uniquely damaging. And what could reinforce that more decisively than the decision to prosecute a woman who was left with no way out?

Changing your mind is not a crime or any kind of justification for prosecution in a case like this. In rape cases in particular, which many women have described as feeling as though they have been assaulted all over again, uncertainty or the decision not to pursue the case is completely understandable. When a woman knows that the details of the most intimate parts of her life will be discussed in public, that her ‘character’, behaviour, dress, habits, relationships, sexual history and and even her medical records may be scrutinized as part of a process which may still (and in so many cases does) see her attacker walk free, the least she can expect (surely?) is the right to decide whether or not she pursues that case?

And when this prospect is reinforced with pressure from elsewhere to abandon the case, as it sometimes is, the incentive to withdraw and desperation felt at the thought of proceeding can have a far stronger pull than the hope that the case might be one of the small percentage that result in a conviction.

The case of the woman in Powys demonstrates a complete inability to comprehend the complexities needs of women facing rape trials and is itself a perversion of what constitutes justice.

Women have as much right to autonomy and respect within the justice system as they do within relationships. Unfortunately all this case has served to demonstrate is that they sometimes meet with neither.