Incriminating No-one

I’ll quote this article in its entirety:

Dunedin police are investigating the sexual assault of a young woman in the centre of the city last night.

Police communications inspector Alan Weston said the woman was attacked about 2.50am.

See? It’s not that hard to report that it actually happened.

And it doesn’t incriminate anyone, neither the accused nor the woman who was raped.

It’s a really obvious one, but…

… he’s been charged with rape, not with having sex. Rape charges, not sex charges please.

Also, arranging for yourself to be cremated and your ashes blasted into space helps prevent rape

More victim blaming:

Hamilton women planning a night out at central city nightspots this weekend have been warned not to be alone amid fears a serial rapist will strike again.

Police said the sex fiend man had picked up and raped three woman at weekends since April.

“He could attack again at any time,” said Hamilton CIB head Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Page.

…
He warned women to make arrangements to get home from the central city rather than walk, not to be alone or to accept rides from strangers or accompany strangers to remote places.

Not to mention the assumption that all women can make arrangements other than walking.

I can’t believe I missed this

‘Commie Mutant Traitor’ pointed this out in a comment, but I think it bears repeating:

Mrs Nicholas, wearing a thick cream cardigan over a white t-shirt and a long red skirt, told crown prosecutor Brent Stanaway QC she initially found Dewar helpful after she laid the complaints and came to consider him a good friend, even writing a letter to Dewar’s superiors commending him on his support and work.

And John Dewar was tastefully dressed in a raven black suit with a royal blue tie? I think not.

This type of reporting is hardly exclusive to rape cases, but it is some guide to just how seriously the media takes women.

Not sex

Man, 46, jailed for sex with girl, 14

I repeat: sex is a consensual act. Even if a woman (or girl) is not kicking and screaming, if her age, a level of coercion or any other reason makes her unable to give true consent, then it is not sex.

Gay sex offender may be on prowl – police

Gay sex offender may be on prowl – police

Perpetrators do not necessarily rape or sexually assault the same gender they are attracted to.

Not only is this headline homophobic, it is also inaccurate (at least, the offender may be gay, but there is absolutely no evidence for that) and reinforces the myth that rape is about sex.

Also: I’m really bad at thinking up titles.

Can’t or Won’t

Without seeing the judge’s full remarks, I can’t say for certain that her words have not been twisted in this article, but it certainly appears that way. Her actual words, quoted towards the end of the article are:

I am satisfied there is a significant risk that you [a convicted rapist] would, if given an opportunity to commit a relevant offence, fail to exercise control of your sexual instinct.

However, at the start of the article, the newspaper reports:

A New Zealand-born actor has been jailed indefinitely for raping three Adelaide women, with a judge finding he cannot control his sexual urges.

There is a large amount of difference between someone who does not do something and someone who cannot do something.

Is it too much to ask for that the media stops making rapists out to be prisoners of their own desires, with no free will of their own?

I’m going to have to repeat this again and again

In ‘Jail for kidnapper outsmarted by schoolgirl ‘, Judge Murray Abbott said:

“In a social context there must be some concern that a young girl, aged 12, would be out and about on the street alone at night,”

Not relevent. Does not make what happened alright. Is not why it happened.

My concern is not that a twelve year old is out late alone, but that if a twelve year old is out at night alone, she is not safe and does not feel safe.

More Victim Blaming

Some words from Christchurch police central area commander Inspector Gary Knowles on the subject of exessive drinking amongst women:

“When women are drunk like this they have no control and are extremely vulnerable.

“They easily become victims of assault or rape and have no idea what has happened.

“How many times do we report stories of women waking up in strange places with only a vague recollection of what has happened the night before? They often have no idea if it was consensual or rape.”

Lets go right back to basics:

1) Women are not raped because they drink, they are raped because men rape them and because society permits it.

2) If a woman is so drunk that she can’t remember what happened in the morning, then she was in no state to give meaningful consent in the first place.

(Also, where’s the panic about men drinking excessively and attacking women? Or just, for that matter, drinking. Or is it only a problem for women, because it’s unladylike and somehow causes men, through no fault of their own, to attack them?)

Introduction and an example

This blog, a project of Wellington Action Against Rape, was set up to examine the news media’s reporting of issues relating to rape and sexual violence. We plan to point out examples where myths have been reinforced, where women (and sometimes men) have been blamed for violence against them or where they have simply not been permitted to tell their side of the story. And we also hope to find better examples of reporting, and hold them up as a model.

Of course, the media does not work in isolation. Not only are the myths they often reinforce widespread in society, but often they are reliant on the police and the courts for their information, institutions which have a great many flaws themselves. On top of that, they can be bound by legalities – suppression orders, and the risk of libel being the most obvious two. Nevertheless, we feel there is a lot more journalists could be doing in this area.

This article from a few days ago provides a good example of some of the things I’m talking about. Entitled ‘Girl, 12,  admits rape claim was false, the first problem is with its  very existence. Of all the rapes that occur each year (I’ve only been able to find statistics for those that make it to trial, which is in the high hundreds – those that actually occur is far, far, greater) most never reach the news. But those that are deemed (not necessarily correctly) to be false.

I’m not saying false complaints should never be reported. But I would like some balance and some context. I would like every rape to be given the same coverage (with respect for the survivor’s privacy, of course).

She had been at a krumping competition – a high-energy dance craze – with friends, while her parents thought she was sleeping safely at a relative’s home

Victim blaming is the phenomenon, often used in the courts and in the media, by which survivors of rape and sexual violence are blamed for it. It can be attributed to the clothes they were wearing, what they were doing at the time, whether they’d previously consented to sex with the rapist, whether they’d previously consented to sex with anyone ever… and so on. This is a prime example.

So, she disobeyed her parents. A twelve year old disobeying her parents. Shock!  But for doing something which every twelve year old has done, she clearly deserves to be raped. This piece of information is completely irrelevant. I don’t care if she’s been torturing puppies, she still didn’t deserve it. And what’s with this assumption that she had been sleeping at a relatives house she would have been safe. Are these people completely unaware that most sexual violence is done by family members or friends?

And the police said:

“But, on the other hand, we are relieved there is not a rapist marauding around the Raureka area; that is comforting to the community.”

If this rape didn’t happen, it means precisely that. It does not, by any stretch of the imagination mean that there are no rapists in the area. Another assumption that the only rapes that happen are those reported to the police, and hey, apparently half of those don’t happen either.

The boy, who is known to the girl but is not a boyfriend, will be referred to Youth Aid.

This last sentence raises the biggest question mark of all.  If there was nothing to the allegations at all, this boy would not be being referred to Youth Aid.

I don’t know what happened in this case. But since there is such a tendency to view women who make false or incorrect allegations as vicious and manipulative (along with a lot of women who make truthful and even provable complaints), here are a couple of alternative possitibilities:

1) A twelve year old is at a party with a group of friends. Most of them are older than her, and she’s doing her best to fit in. She’s flattered when a sixteen year old boy starts showing interest in her. He asks her to come for a walk with him. She’s a little nervous, but ashamed to turn him down, and she knows she will be looked up at school if she has an older boyfriend. They walk to the school grounds. He kisses her and she kisses him back. Then he rapes her.

She tells her parents who tell the police.  The police put constant pressure on her, forcing her to relive the incident over and over again. They ask why she went with him alone, did she kiss him, why didn’t she scream? (She froze in terror, but in retrospect she doesn’t understand why.) In the end, it just seems easier and less painful to make things up.

2) A twelve year old girl was raped by a family friend, who threatened her if she told anyone. Moreover, she knows her parents like and trust him and doesn’t think she’ll be believed. But in the end the pain gets too much, and she’s desperate to tell someone. She doesn’t feel safe telling the truth, though, so she invents a story that still enables her to talk about how she feels. She didn’t expect the police to be called, but when they are they go over her story, find that it doesn’t add up, and she is forced to admit it wasn’t true.