Tuesday 1 December 2009

ACPO advises women: stay sober to avoid rape

Thinking of getting merry this Christmas? Think again, if you're a girl. According to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), women who don't want to be raped have a responsibility not to get drunk. A new campaign, launched on Monday, aims to deter "potential victims" from drinking too much - implying once again that women are to blame for rape.


Dave Whatton, ACPO lead on rape, explained that “A large proportion of reported rape cases feature alcohol as a factor. Ultimately we want to prevent rape from occurring in the first place, by arming potential victims with key advice on how to keep themselves safe."


The campaign, which also contains advice aimed at potential rapists, encourages women to "let your hair down, not your guard down". News associations across the country, including Reuters, Associated Newspapers and the BBC, have predictably honed in on the message that women have a responsibility to protect themselves from rape by staying sober. This may be news to potential rapists, but most women do not need to be told how to protect themselves from rape.


The 'safety work' that women do to avoid male violence is ingrained in young girls from an early age. We learn to choose clothes which will not 'provoke' men, to be sexually timid, to avoid walking home in the dark without an escort. We learn to mistrust men we do not know: better safe than sorry. Anti-rape activist Hilary McCollum explains that "Many women curtail their freedom because of their fear of violence, especially rape. Fear of rape limits women's lives, as do stereotypes about who gets raped and when."


I am all too familiar with how damaging these stereotypes can be. Three years ago, after drinking an unhealthy amount of white rum at a party, I was raped by an acquaintance of mine. What I found most distressing about the incident wasn't the non-consensual sex, nor even the STD that I contracted as a result. In fact, what really left me traumatised were the subsequent years of guilt, silence and shame, fuelled by a deep belief that because I had been drinking, what happened to me was my fault.


For years, I didn't mention that night to anyone, because I had internalised the message that girls who drink and flirt with men deserve to be raped. That message did not come from my parents, nor even from the man involved, who was appalled and apologetic when he realised what he'd drunkenly done. The message came directly from social propaganda, some of it as horrifically well-meaning as the current ACPO campaign.


The still-current idea that women who drink are wantonly putting themselves at risk of rape does untold damage, both to women and to men. Men watching the ACPO campaign will internalise the sexist notion that men cannot control their carnal impulses. Worse still, the violent, misogynist minority of men will once more be informed–by the police, no less - that women who have been drinking are fair game for their unwanted attentions.


Alcohol is the short skirt of the 21st century – an excuse designed to limit male culpability for sexual violence. Victim-blaming messages like the current ACPO campaign have been around for centuries, disguised as advice to help women ‘protect’ themselves - but with tens of thousands of rapes occurring each year in Britain alone, the strategy has hardly worked so far. Although alcohol is involved in many instances of sexual violence, staying sober is no protection against rape. In Afghanistan, a country where the majority of women do not drink or attend parties, rape is “a human rights problem of profound proportions”, according to the UN.


The ACPO campaign takes a step in the right direction by partnering these messages with adverts and posters reminding men that sex without consent is rape. But telling men that if they rape, they can expect to be jailed is of little use if, in the same breath, you also tell women that if they drink, they can expect to be raped. It is never a woman's fault if she is raped: not if she's drunk, not if she's sober, not if she's standing on a table wearing a thong and baby oil. The responsibility for rape lies, always and only, with the minority of men who rape.


I’ve learned the hard way not to get drunk around men I don’t know well. But even if every woman and girl in Britain stays entirely sober all winter, hundreds of us will be raped this Christmas – and every Christmas, until we live in a world where men, rather than women, learn to take responsibility for ending sexual violence.

44 comments:

  1. Assuming if you're in London you've seen the latest round of TfL anti-unbooked-minicab adverts? I'm assuming, even in Boris days, that someone non-clueless somewhere must have approved them, but they're the kind of victim-blaming, trigger-y hell that I'm struggling to work out who and how.

    (ACPO, on the other hand, are the kind of anti-accountable body that as far as I can work out they could legally be a random social club, but happen to give out free opinions and stuff to any head rozzer who wants it...)

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  2. I don't think that's a fair reaction to the ACPO advice.

    Of course the blame for a rape always and will always lie solely with the perpetrator.

    But the message to be careful is still a valid one, surely? To attempt an analogy... there's nothing that I could do that would make it acceptable to mug me... but would it be victim blaming for a police campaign to suggest circumspection as to which dark alleys I walk down?

    Looking at the ACPO's site I can't see anything about staying sober. I think that taking 'let your hair down, not your guard down' to mean 'don't get drunk!' is to willfully misconstrue the advice to make your point.

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  3. Oh, supplementary... I think your anger is better aimed at the Metro article, and especially the headline, rather than the ACPO statement itself.

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  4. Britain can be a dangerous place. I agree that official emphasis on the actions which victims can take to avoid crime runs the risk of normalising crimes in the minds of potential criminals, but at the same time don`t we have a duty to give practical advice? Would you say that a sign warning of pickpockets operating in a given area is equally offensive?
    If we are looking for ways to reduce rape, given the nature of the crime, I`d suggest that the answer is very likely to have to involve women as well - "women can do anything they like but men aren`t allowed to look at them" is not a realistic model for society.

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  5. Jesus wept. I mean, the cops' institutional attitude to rape is light years ahead of what it used to be, but then you get something like this. At least they have moved beyond the "Girls, don't wear a short skirt!" motif.

    If you want to encourage women to behave sensibly with alcohol, fair enough, but there must be some way of doing it without implying culpability. Women being drunk may make them vulnerable, but it sure isn't an invitation to anything. And (putting on a utopian hat) ideally it should be possible for women to behave stupidly without fear of being raped or fear that they'll be blamed for it.

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  6. The ACPO aren't saying 'stay sober to avoid rape'. The Metro sums it up fairly well:

    It calls on women to "let your hair down, not your guard" and warns men, "Rape: short word, long sentence."

    Which seems a sensible message. It's a bit of a stretch to go from "let your hair down, not your guard" to "it's your fault if you drink too much and get raped".

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  7. I understand your outrage is that you believe the onus should be on men not to rape, and thus ACPO should be putting up posters advising men not to rape rather than women how not to make themselves susceptible to rape; and that to suggest women can change their behaviours and thus avoid rape is an indication that any rape that does then happen is their fault. I don’t think any of that is true. ACPO does not wish to blame women, it wishes to stop rape. Posters advising sociopaths and psychopaths not to rape would in my view be significantly less effective.

    It is a sad truth that very drunk women are often the target of rape. It is also a sad truth that children accepting lifts from strangers often end up covered in semen and blood and dead in a ditch. When a mother advises a child not to accept lifts from strangers, she is not winking to the camera and saying "Children who are the victims of murderers, it was all your fault for getting into the car", she is trying to ensure her child knows the best strategy for making it to their teens. The same is true of rape. It is like saying being given a rape alarm is telling women it will be their fault if they’re raped and they forget to carry it.

    (As an aside, you also comment that women already know how to evade rape, and spend their lives taking precautions to avoid the risk of male aggression. If that is true - and if it is, I find that very sad - then you should simply walk past the posters and not to worry. To complain about the posters on that basis suggests a curiously ego-centric view of the world, like me passing a Legoland poster and complaining that I've already been to Legoland so why the hell are they advertising to me).

    They also advise women not to drink ‘too much’, which is good advice to anyone. They’re not saying don’t drink anything, which would be unreasonable. I suppose their message is: “Don’t drink so much that you let down your guard against male aggesssion”.

    I think the best conclusion I have is: There's absolutely nothing wrong in advising women of the best ways to avoid being raped, and if women choose to ignore the advice then they are not to blame for their rape, but they should bear in mind that it does not make sense to ignore advice to avoid being raped when rape is pretty godwaful.

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  8. Thank you. I'm going to a 'how to stay safe' talk by the local police force tomorrow. I hope the talk doesn't include any of this nonsense, but if it does, you've helped me to formulate some responses.

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  9. Do you object to the mere fact that women are being advised on how to avoid rape, or to the way this campaign was implemented?

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  10. My favourite refutation of this victim-blaming attitude to rape is by Fugitivus:

    "Women shouldn’t be raped because they A) drink B) go out in public C) walk down dark alleys D) have sex E) wear clothing F) are pretty G) whatever, but if they do these things, they shouldn’t be surprised if they get raped.

    The comparison for this isn’t, “I shouldn’t be surprised if I get robbed if I leave my door unlocked.”

    The comparison is, “I shouldn’t be surprised if I get robbed if I carry a purse or a wallet, or spend money in public, or leave the house wearing anything but a burlap sack (thus indicating I have money to purchase clothing), or have a job, or talk about my job, or reveal my salary to friends, or have a bank account and go to the bank in public. I mean, let’s be reasonable, anybody could see me doing any of those things and intuit that I have money, and so naturally they’re going to try and take my money.”

    That wouldn’t be unreasonable, would it? I mean, that’s what a robber would look for in a target. But we don’t consider people who leave the house with their purses and purchase goods in public stores to be really reckless and stupid and deserving of their eventual robbery, because jesus christ, that’s just normal stuff that every person in the world does.

    [...]

    All a rapist is looking for is a woman. Any woman can fit this bill. Maybe they have a particular type of woman they’d like to rape; this narrows the field to all women who match the type. But there is no corollary to the robber and his victim; all women have what a rapist wants. No woman has more or less vagina for a rapist to violate.

    What some women do have is cultural approval to be raped.

    A criminal wants to A) commit a crime and B) get away with it. When we’re talking about rape, any woman fits the bill for A. But only women that bystanders believe deserve to be raped fit the bill for B."

    The whole article is well worth reading.

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  11. Thank you so much for this. I agree with you entirely. I was also raped when very drunk, when I was 19 (the man in question was, in as much as I can remember, tipsy if not entirely sober). It took me years to recognise that this was not my fault, and to call it "rape" rather than something stupid *I'd* done. And things like this take it way back.

    And Mark, saying this: "women can do anything they like but men aren't allowed to look at them" is a ludicrous straw man. Looking is not touching. What Penny *is* saying is that women can do anything they like but men aren't allowed to rape them. I say it with her. Loudly. Because it clearly needs saying.

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  12. Rape: Short word, long sentence.

    This would be much more convincing if rape conviction rates were above 7%.

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  13. Yes, but Elly, Laurie also objects to men looking at women on public transport.

    I don`t think that saying that people can do anything they like as long as it isn`t violent is going to work or even means anything - violence is just a continuation of social discourse by other means.
    Once we establish that people have no duty to behave in a socially resposible fasion, it`s going to be ery hard to draw the line at violence.

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  14. Mark - No. Laurie objects to men *staring* at women on public transport. As in fact do most of us.

    You are constructing an argument here that Laurie (and possibly I) are saying that people can do anything they like as long as it isn't violent. That is a misreading of Laurie's articles. There *is* a legitimate political position that runs along those lines, granted. It's not one I share, but one that deserves a little more thought than "isn't going to work and doesn't mean anything".

    Violence "just a continuation of social discourse by other means"? Do you honestly believe that, or are you setting up a devil's advocate position here? Because it strikes me as an amoral and somewhat bizarre thing to say.

    Social responsibility means different things to different people. To me it means compassion, respect for other's boundaries. It means caring for the people and the world around us. It pretty much excludes victim-blaming, whether that's framed as "blame" or by weaselly expressions such as "taking some responsibility", pretty much by definition.

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  15. Penny, I read this post last night and agree with every word.

    I'm sorry you had to go through such shit. I'm sorry and very angry that so many women in the majority but also men have to go through this shit. All because men, including those 'yes but' commenters, above, don't understand/agree that they do not have a right to use somebody else's body. Consent is basic folks - yes means yes, nothing else suffices.

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  16. the problem in a nutshell is that you *cannot* make women reponsible for "protecting themselves" without also implying that the corollary is then ALSO true - i.e. that if you don't "protect yourself", then you are responsible if something happens.

    it does not make sense on any logical planet to say, "we're not victim blaming, but just in case, you should avoid becoming a victim".

    excellent post.

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  17. @splinteredsunrise

    "If you want to encourage women to behave sensibly with alcohol, fair enough, but there must be some way of doing it without implying culpability. Women being drunk may make them vulnerable, but it sure isn't an invitation to anything."

    Don't you think that's the message of "let your hair down, not your guard" & "Rape: short word, long sentence."

    It might sound weak coming from a bloke who has little to no fear of this most horrible of crimes... but I think we would all prefer a world in which women could do what the hell they like with no fear. I certainly would. But as that is not (yet?) the world... isn't it sensible to recognise the risks while trying everything possible to prevent them?

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  18. Elly - fair enough. When does a look become a stare and if it`s Brad Pitt (or Angelina Jolie), is it ok?

    I`d say it`s rather better to keep an analysis amoral rather than imagining that reality fits into whatever particular fancy you happen to have taken. Me saying that violence isn`t a common and natural part of human relations would be rather like a conservative christian saying that all children in Britain are born in wedlock. Stupid.
    And no, i`m not constructing a devils advocate argument here - I genuinely believe that violence is an ever present undertone to our social interactions, and can`t imagine a world in which violence is simply wished away.
    Obviously, in the modern world we have an ever increasing opportunity to communicate and empathise with others - we`re richer and we have fairly strong law enforcement all of which has led to a massive reduction in violent crime over the past few hundred years.

    However, I`d suggest that what as led to an increase in violent crime over the last 50 odd years is the advent of the permissive society.
    It`s not victim blaming to suggest that if we live in a society in which people appear to do whatever they wish, others will react to the inability to do so with violence.

    For example we might agree that if we want to reduce violence it must be managed by introducing good manners into society and alternative ways to resolve disputes - this isn`t blaming the victim in the individual case- it`s the only way to achieve our ends on the large scale.
    So basically, yes - women and men both must take responsibility for society.

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  19. Also - what do you mean by "caring for the people around us" - if you mean caring about your friends and family but having no responsibility to broader society then it isn`t sufficient, if you mean caring about everyone - i`d suggest it simply isn`t true.
    Personally, I don`t care overmuch about the strangers surrounding me in society - but I do feel I have a duty to behave in a socially acceptable fasion.

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  20. Mark wrote, "For example we might agree that if we want to reduce violence it must be managed by introducing good manners into society."

    Mark seems to be presuming that most people have bad manners. That is not my experience. It is also my experience that most people, whether working class or middle class, try to instil good manners in their children. That's probably also true of the upper class, but I don't get to meet many upper class people.

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  21. I totally agree with Laurie that women already know to be weary of rape and/or violence against them - we grow up in a culture of fear that is exasperated with every further act of misogynistic violence that makes it into the news. A poster campaign trying to further this weariness is a bit patronising really, and a total waste of resources.

    I think for the day we see a major, overt, in-your-face campaign against raping - "Don't drink and rape" etc. One that squarely places blame on rapists for rape - not tries to discourage them from raping by saying "you might end up in prison" but actually says that society does not tolerate rapists.

    I guess they couldn't do that right now because society does tolerate rapists - because, well, he's such a nice guy, and she was drunk and acting promiscuous, and he really didn't mean to, and perhaps she should have shouted no louder...etc...

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  22. """It is a sad truth that very drunk women are often the target of rape"""

    Well yes, except that the majority of women who say they have been raped are sober. 65% in fact

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4548534.stm

    Therefore statistically speaking, to avoid rape, women should be drunk at all times!

    What is being (falsely) assumed here is that drinking places a woman more at risk of being raped than not drinking. Rather than rape can often occur on social occasions when COINCIDENTALLY a woman has consumed alcohol, as often happens on social occasions. In other words you're assuming a causal relationship that there is no evidence for.

    There is an obvious causal relationship between drinking alcohol, then driving and having car accidents. In that alcohol slows reaction times and makes you more likely to crash a car.

    Alcohol does not make a woman more vulnerable to rape, unless she's actually unconscious. What happens is a woman frequently, for example, meets a man on a social occasion when alcohol is being consumed, and said man then rapes her. It's the presence of the man that's the problem, not the drink.

    You're assuming that if a woman is sober she is more able to resist a rapist than when she's been drinking, which is also a false assumption. Again, unless a woman is actually passed out, her ability to fight off a rapist isn't really limited by the odd drink. Speaking personally, I'm MORE likely to punch someone when I'm drunk than when I'm sober.

    'Don't drink so much you pass out' is probably good advice for everyone, not just women. Men can get robbed, and yes, raped, too. But ACPO are only targeting women. That's the problem here.

    The thing a woman that is most likely to put a woman at risk of being raped is quite simply having a sexual relationship with a man. 56% of women who are raped are raped by a partner or former partner.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2146077.stm

    When I see ACPO advocating political lesbianism, I'll believe they want to stop rape.

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  23. I do hate how the focus of rape is all too often on the victim and not the people who actually rape.

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  24. --> Interesting stats, Polly, but my feeling is that with this campaign ACPO is seeking to help the 44% of women who are raped by strangers, not those raped by people they already know, and it would be good to know what proportion of those women have been drunk when raped.

    I accept that a woman may be as able to fight off a man drunk as when sober, but I do think she is more likely to be put herself in more dangerous situations. Thinking about friends who have got excessively drunk (male and female), dangerous behaviour has included accepting lifts from people you wouldn't normally trust, getting off the bus late at night in the middle of dodgy areas by accident, taking drugs you don't know the provenance of and walking through parks you would distrust even in daylight. All of these increase the risk of rape and can be caused by alcohol. They also increase the risk of mugging and murder, but ACPO isn't targeting those crimes in this campaign.

    I should add that I absolutely don't think any woman who gets raped should blame herself, whether drunk or not, and if she does feel that way then she should be seeking therapy.

    I also think that lines such as "I've learned the hard way not to get drunk around men" and "all men need to learn that they do not have a right to use another person's body" are very insulting to men ... given that the majority of men do not rape, these comments are simply oversimplistic and sexist. It discredits your point to send out cheap shots demonising an entire half of the human race.

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  25. "Therefore statistically speaking, to avoid rape, women should be drunk at all times!"

    Isn`t that a bit like saying that more people get injured while walking down the street than playing in rugby matches, so we should all play in rugby matches all the time?

    Vanilla, I `m not sure that English manners are that good anymore (though probably still alot better than most places) - but the idea that we can control peoples sexual and violent impulses while at the same time telling them they can do anything they like strikes me as a bit of a funny idea. The one time when English people are given license to do as they wish (at the pub, when drunk) they choose to spend their time shouting, fighting and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
    There may well be some kind of primeval rage within the British that must be controlled by good manners.

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  26. Talk about pandering to poor ickle rapists' fears - it's not the (statistically unlikely) "long sentence", but the horrific impact on the victim that should matter.

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  27. ""Therefore statistically speaking, to avoid rape, women should be drunk at all times!"

    Isn`t that a bit like saying that more people get injured while walking down the street than playing in rugby matches, so we should all play in rugby matches all the time?""""



    The point I was making Mark which I will explain in even more depth because you don't seem to understand it is that you shouldn't assume that because two events coincide, one causes the other. But you obviously still are doing that, and don't understand the difference between correlationa and causation. The point is I have yet to see anyone claim that being sober makes you more likely to be raped.

    What is being claimed here is that drinking makes you take risks that mean you are more likely to be raped. What are these risks? Walking home late at night? Well if I go out for the evening, I'm probably going to do that anyway, whether I've been drinking or not.

    So what other risks might a woman conceivably take when drunk that she wouldn't take when sober? Being alone with a man for example. Well again that can happen when you are drunk or sober. It may well be the case after the type of social occasions such as parties or going to nightclubs/bars when people ALSO drink that someone will go back to someone else's house, or invite them back to theirs. But again there is no evidence I can think of that drunk women, are more likely to be alone with a man than sober women.

    It's the men that are the risk factor here Mark, not the drink. I've been drunk loads of times, I've never been raped, and I'm statistically very much less likely to be raped than a lot of women -because I'm a lesbian and don't really spend time socialising with straight men, plus I don't have male sexual partners - the biggest risk factor bar none.

    Take this (true) story for example. A woman goes back to a man's house for sex, which she wants and consents to. His housemates come in,decide they want to join in, which she does not consent to. They rape her.

    Had she been drinking? Yes. Did drinking lead her to be raped? No.

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  28. ""However, I`d suggest that what as led to an increase in violent crime over the last 50 odd years is the advent of the permissive society.
    """

    Oh I missed this bit. Are you related to Mary Whitehouse Mark? However given your views, you will no doubt believe that the woman in the example I've given above was to blame for being raped.

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  29. I'd like to advise that it's the men that stay sober this Christmas instead.

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  30. For what it's worth I think you're completely wrong about this. Why shouldn't you be advised honestly about what will decrease your chances of being raped? We don't exactly live in an idyll where we can hope men won't take advantage of women who are not in complete control of themselves. (Not that that's any reason not to keep trying to make meaningful changes.)

    An analogous case - I, as a young man, take note of an sometimes follow similar advice about how to avoid being attacked. Eg. avoid that dark alley, do not get so drunk you're not in control etc. (Incidentally I choose this case because young men are actually the strata of society most likely to be involved in violent incidents - the statistical case for this is cast-iron).

    It is not my fault if I am attacked. Just as it is not a woman's if she gets raped. However, in either case you can take precautions to help avoid having either eventuality occur.

    You should not be so quick to conflate fault and rape-avoidance; one of the sad facts of time has been how the two *have* been allowed to *seem* interconnected when they're not.

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  31. Yes, you may well be right, but pointing out that in absolute terms more women are raped when they haven`t been drinking than when they have doesn`t really show anyone anything, since most people spend alot more time not drinking than drinking.
    I guess the way to decide whether drinking itself is a risk factor is to take a similar activity (going to the cinema, going out but not drinking, going to work) and seeing whether women who drink are more likely to be raped than those who aren`t. Otherwise we`re comparing apples and oranges which was my original point.

    I most certainly do not blame the woman and find it extremely puzzling that someone can think a world in which it is considered acceptable for men to walk in on their friend having sex and demand a gangbang (are we talking about footballers here?) is not one in which sexual morality has been completely discarded and that this isn`t at least part of the problem.
    Gangbangs are a normal part of thier weekend with their friends? Degrading sex has been normalised to these people - of course they can`t understand no ... why would anyone say no, anything goes right?
    That`s what you get when anything goes - behaviour more appropriate for cavemen or horror movie characters than civilised human beings.

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  32. Personally, I don't think this intends to, or does, blame women for being raped at all. It's just a message to help women stay safer, much like "don't leave your car unlocked" and such. Ideally, no rape or robbery would occur in either situation, but you can't say that neither action (not getting entirely smashed-drunk or locking your car) is an entirely unreasonable precaution.

    'Blame' is entirely the wrong word, as no matter how drunk someone is, or how unlocked their car is, they are not responsible for the crime against them - but I really don't see the logic behind lashing out against attempts to remind people of this, and other well-intentioned attempts to prevent rape and abuse of women, in place of going after legitimate targets such as the people responsible for such heinous crimes.

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  33. In South Africa the Mantra is "Real Men Don't Rape", and as such this is an acknowledgement that the victims can do little to prevent it.
    However, rape is part of the culture there, whereas in Britain, rapists are sexual deviants.

    They are not "normal" men.

    Bearing that in mind, what good does it do telling them not to do it? Rather ask the question to "normal" men, what would they do to a rapist who touched their sister/girlfriend etc.? You will not find sympathy for the rapist.

    Taking for granted that the perpetrators cannot be convinced, it makes sense to offer support to potential victims. We all warm our kids there are bad people out there. It can't hurt to remind our female citizens of the same dangers.

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  34. Excuse me Viking, why are you saying that in Britain rapists "are not 'normal' men" ? It is this denial of the fact that it is actually 'normal' men who rape that allows the en masse rape of women in Britain to continue.

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  35. En Masse??
    Why I am saying it is because rapists are sexual deviants. Are you saying they ARE normal?
    Maybe that's way rapists, when they are caught, parade proudly through their prisons, cheered on by the other inmates as heroes.
    No?
    Maybe I am out of touch, but ask any man what he will do to such a pervert and he will tell you, and the word "police" will not be mentioned.
    These animals are not only the worst kind of criminals - worse than some murderers in my view - but they give all men a bad name.

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  36. I am wondering how much of this is about improving their conviction rates. There are more significant risk factors (if it is a risk factor at all) but it does make prosecuting cases more difficult if the defence cast doubt on witness testimony as 'impaired' through alcohol.

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  37. FYI the words 'if it is a risk factor at all' refer to this piece by Ben Goldacre http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/asking-for-it/

    “We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.”

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  38. Viking,

    you want to ask 'normal' men what they would do to a rapist who touched their girlfriend/sister.

    Obviously, yes, they would be horrified.
    But I'm sure rapists also have sisters and mothers and if told they had been raped would be 'horrified'.

    Home Office statistics show that 45% of rapes were committed by perpetrators who were the victim's partner at the time of the attack...

    Many rasists are these 'normal' men you speak of...the stereotype of a crazed, mentally ill, deranged man running around alleys raping women does not mirror the reality that in only 8% of rapes is the attacker a complete stranger.

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  39. For those guys who rap women>> What's the point of sex if the opposite person is not willing to do it. Get a life!!! My blog: portable dvd player reviews

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  41. Great sweater - I found my Dad's old Aran knit in the storage closet this week - and I'm thrilled that chunky knits are in. Time to go outfit plan! vaillant kombi servisi

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