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Why don't more victims report sexual assault?

This is a follow-up question to Why don't more people report sexual harassment?.

sexual harassment

rape

psychology

understand

tynamite

In Britain, 2 out of 3 rapes go unreported, and that statistic comes from the police, not a survey panel or charity. That means that there's an awful lot of rape victims reported to the police who decide not to press charges!

The reason why this is, is because rape is notoriously hard to prove in court. In a legal system where innocent until proven guilty prevails, it's extremenly difficult to prove someone's intent, as most rape victims are raped by someone they know, not some random stranger off the street.

It's time for that classic Corn Flakes for breakfast argument.

Proving that Issac raped me, is like proving that I had Corn Flakes for breakfast.

The Corn Flakes for breakfast argument is why murder cases get dropped due to lack of evidence despite witnesses coming forward. If there's no evidence to prosecute someone, what more can you do? Going back to what I said earlier, most rape victims are raped by someone they know. If a woman is raped after a first date, or after staying behind at work, do you think that the accused family is going to testify against him in court? For all you know, he could be telling the truth and the woman could be bluffing crying rape. It happens.

There's also the amount of women who are raped or not raped whilst drunk. Imagine you're a judge on a rape trial which came to light because the woman's testimony said she woke up with a man she knew after getting drunk, who she didn't give consent to. Her statement is full of sentences saying she can't remember certain things.

If the woman can't remember what happened in a time period, how do you know that she never gave consent? The woman could have asked him to sleep with her whilst drunk.

I know plenty of women who when drunk, give out their numbers to more men and start sleeping around. Are you ready to lock someone up for years in prison over an allegation for something that the woman could have initiated? That's why in Britain, drunken consent is still consent though the media won't tell the public that for obvious reasons!

Despite how rape is up there with notoriety with murder and fraud, its difficulty to prove makes victims know that reporting rape isn't worth their time. I can't begin to imagine what it's like to have my dignity taken through rape, and have a court case ongoing which I know could collapse at any time. I imagine the embarrassment of it all to be crushing, but I could never imagine what it must be like.

Update

Pips Taylor covered a really important issue last night for our Criminal
Britain Season as she looked into the reasons around low conviction
rates for rape in the UK. If you missed it, you can catch up on iPlayer
and have your say on on her blog:
http://bbc.in/GXIT8d

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01f6sgk/I_Never_Said_Yes/