Mumsnet asks – if you were raped would you report it?
The mumsnet site has a discussion thread running which asks: If you were raped, would you report it?
I haven’t had time to go through all 157 messages that have been posted in reply to the question, but I have looked at the first 25.
Of those, one woman said she would report, but then added that she had never been raped; another who said she’d report wasn’t sure if she could follow it through the court process.
The rest said they would not report the rape. This was generally based on their own experience of having been raped (which they had not reported) because they did not feel they could cope with the court process.
Of those who had been raped and had reported it to the police, the general feeling seemed to be that they would not put themselves through it again.
Although a shocking consensus (that most of us would not report a rape), it’s hardly surprising given the way that women are treated by the criminal justice system.
A further number of respondents, up to 352 when I visited, the vast majority women that had been raped and hadn’t reported it due to the lack of support within the community for them. Until the media, friends, family as well as the police, courts, solicititors, judges and juries start treating the victim as innocent until proven guilty as well as the defendant – we will not have equal human rights in this country. Added to that vast onslaught of porn into the country, portraying rape as entertainment, it is hardly surprising that the third most serious crime on the statute books has a less than .6% conviction rate when 97% of victims can name their attacker.