You shouldn’t automatically believe anybody but it depends on the context.If a female friend (or male for that matter) told me that they had been raped, I would believe them, I’d support them and I’d have empathy for them. What is friendship without trust?
I don’t know why I’m saying “if”, I have several friends, both female and male in this category.
If I was a police officer and someone made an allegation of rape I’d expect the police to be compassionate and caring. They have a duty of care for that person and they have a duty to investigate the evidence.
There are times when women (and men and children) have made accusations and gone to the police for help and they have not been believed and investigations haven’t been carried out. The case of Banaz Mahmod, springs to mind for example although that was an honour killing situation, not a rape.
What about the CPS, should the CPS believe all women? No. They should look at the evidence that the police have managed to collect and they should decide whether they think they will be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt, in a court of law, that the defendant is guilty.
It’s not about belief. I am sure that they are regularly in a position where they believe that the accuser is telling the truth but sadly there is not enough evidence to prove it. With crimes like rape, there are rarely any witnesses, just the conflicting statements of two people. How do you prove rape in a case where two people admit that they had sex, but one believes it was consensual and the other does not?
A rape kit is not going to help you here and in most rape cases it isn’t a question of whether sex has occurred but whether both parties were willing participants. It’s not right that this means that guilty people get away with it, but it wouldn’t be right either if innocent people were put in prison because we thought they might be guilty.
Both these scenarios happen and they have a detrimental impact on individual human beings.
That’s a hard pill to swallow. Sadly the law isn’t perfect. Many people, out of compassion for the victims that haven’t got justice want to flip the system back on its head so that it’s the responsibility of the defendant to prove that they aren’t guilty.
Yes, this would result in fewer genuine rapists getting away with their crime but it would also send many innocent people to prison as well as creating an incentive for people to lie.
There’s this idea that floats around that “women don’t lie about rape”. The vast majority don’t, I agree with that. The vast majority of men don’t rape either. You might call me naive but I like to give people the benefit of doubt until doubt is removed.
Women are human. Human beings lie. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might lie about rape. It may be that they have a partner and they want to conceal an affair. It maybe that their family don’t believe in sex before marriage and the only way out of being shamed is to make out that they were forced into it.
It could be revenge for being cheated or or dumped. Rejection can be very painful and people don’t always think straight when they are distressed.
Women are no more likely to be honest than men are, we all have flaws.It’s not safe to assume that an allegation is false and it’s also not safe to assume that an allegation is true either. Rape is an awful crime. It takes away people’s control and their dignity. We need to be compassionate to rape victims.
Being falsely accused is equally destructive. I’ve seen quotes from feminist academics claiming that being falsely accused is good for men because it will give them empathy for women and make them think about their own behaviour. Like men don’t already have empathy for women?
Where is their empathy for men? When someone has been falsely accused of something so heinous that even hardened gangsters think is the worst thing in the world, the mud sticks. People lose family, they lose their jobs, and even when acquitted, the “no smoke without fire” brigade follow them around forever.
It’s no wonder that some of these men go on to kill themselves, just as some rape victims do too.
You don’t fix a wrong by doing more wrong to other people. That’s not justice, it’s abuse.
I really wish I had a magic bullet answer that could fix the issue on both sides but there isn’t one.
The best we can do is hold our prosecutors to account and make sure they’re not dropping cases where there is sufficient evidence but also make sure they’re not prosecuting people when there is no evidence. A witch hunt is not justice!
Rape and sexual assault is not just an issue that affects women, the most prolific rapist of all time in the UK solely targeted young men.
UK law doesn’t even recognise men forced to penetrate women as rape. Yes, it’s still considered sexual assault but whenever it happens you see lots of comments, mostly from other men, claiming that they “must have enjoyed it”.
No, just no.
Every victim matters! Lets remove the stigma of reporting these crimes. Lets be empathetic but lets also not jump the gun and convict people based on the emotion of how heinous a crime it is!
Rant Over 