Racism and violence against women

I have just read a very distressing article in the Sunday Times here

It tells of a story of a 15 year old girl with learning disabilities being prostituted by her parents and mother in law (she has a mother in law though she can't really because she is 15). The article then goes on to discuss "honour killings" and the threat of honour killings. But is it me or does it just read like a diatribe against muslims as opposed to the horrendous organised sexual abuse of a young disabled woman. The Sunday Times when writing about prostitution never links it to the harm of women or the abuse of women and is quite happy to portray prostituted women as "happy hookers" or to re-tell the story of a high class prostitute or brainy students from Oxford "working" through college here.

However when talking about muslims they take a feminist and child protection stance yet somehow fail to talk about the perpetrators as sex offenders and prefers to talk about them as muslims. There is something wrong here and the comments part of the article are promoting racism.

Check out Southhall Black Sisters here

Men believe they can get away with rape, claims Cameron

First time for everything! Never agreed with David Cameron before - but in fairness he is stating the obvious. We need to do something about these rape convictions, it affectively means that rape in Scotland is legal unless you totally step over the line - the godess only knows what the line is but 95% of reported rapes obviously don't make it!

Men believe they can get away with rape, claims Cameron
GERRI PEEV POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
gpeev@scotsman.com)
MEN in Britain believe they can get away with rape, David Cameron claimed yesterday as he accused the Labour government of presiding over a moral collapse in society.
The Conservative Party leader pledged extra help for victims and stronger punishments for rapists, calling for sex education to include emphasis on the need for consent.

While the figures he cited for England and Wales showed a conviction rate of just 5.1 per cent of all complainants, in Scotland it is 1 percentage point lower. The Scottish Government has already pledged a new Sexual Offences Bill to tackle the low conviction rate.
In a speech to the Conservative Women's Organisation in London, Mr Cameron called for a cultural change. "Studies have shown that as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's OK to force a woman to have sex," he said. "To my mind, this is an example of moral collapse."
The Tory leader warned that society has become increasingly "sexualised" over the past decade, during which time treating women as sex objects has become viewed as "cool". He also called for compulsory sex education in schools to drive home the message that sex without consent is a criminal offence.
"And what about when the perpetrator is convicted?" he continued. "The average custodial sentence handed to rapists in England and Wales has fallen ... to around 80 months. Given all this, we have a situation where rapists think they can get away with it, while victims wonder what's the point of pursuing the criminal process."
Citing the case of Lindsay Armstrong, 16, who committed suicide after seeing her attacker convicted of rape in a trial at which she was asked to show the court the underwear she had been wearing at the time of the assault, Mr Cameron said more support was also vital.
The Labour Party hit back at criticism of the low conviction rates for rape. A spokesman pointed out that the Conservatives - including Mr Cameron and David Davis, the shadow home secretary - had voted against allowing police to take DNA samples from a person arrested for a recordable offence as part of the Criminal Justice Bill. Since the law came into force in 2004, 90 rapists had been convicted, the spokesman said.
Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, insisted the government was taking action, including providing new centres to provide medical care and counselling to victims, putting in place specialist police officers and prosecutors and trialling the use of "independent sexual violence advisers" in 38 areas.
Sally Ireland, senior legal officer at the campaign group Justice warned against engineering conviction rates upwards by making trials unfair.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said it was awaiting a report from the Scottish Law Commission before it published a final sexual offences bill. "No victim should be dissuaded from coming forward because they fear that the law is unclear or that their experience will not be taken seriously," he said.
SHAMING FIGURES
SCOTLAND has one of the world's lowest conviction rates for rape, a statistic which has been repeatedly condemned by campaigners.
Out of 975 serious sex crimes reported to the police last year, only 38 - or one in 25 - culminated in guilty verdicts. This translates to a conviction rate of 3.9 per cent.
The all-time low compares with a 5 per cent conviction rate in 2005.
The number of reported rape cases has soared by 300 per cent over the past three decades. In 1997-98, there were 596 rapes reported, while in 2004-5 the number was 900.
Rapists are also almost ten times more likely to be found guilty in some parts of Scotland compared with others, according to figures released earlier this year.
Grampian had a conviction rate of less than 1 per cent, while at the other end of the scale the neighbouring Northern Constabulary area achieved 8.7 per cent.

First change the culture

The government plans rape law reforms, but in a society that assumes women make it up, how can they be implemented? Julie Bindel, journalist from the Guardian explores why without cultural change rape will always be hard to "prove" as rape happens to normal women with normal lives. Rape is often just seen as sex gone bad as opposed to a violent physical and psychological attack on a woman abusing her inner being as well as her body. rape is used to control women and is a hate fuelled crime like no other - it is not sexual in any way except to violate the victims sexuality and very being. Women are too often seen as fantasists, liars or whores rather than victims. Why is this?

All Julie Bindel articles

November 28, 2007 2:00 PM | Printable version

Rape, it would seem, has become a "political football": so says Vera Baird, the solicitor general. She was referring to David Cameron's recent speech, in which he said that his party was committed to challenging the appallingly low conviction rate.

Baird, who is due to announce reforms to the laws surrounding rape, understands the issue. Ten years ago, I coordinated a scheme in West Yorkshire in conjunction with the CPS, to deliver specialist training to prosecutors in all aspects of sexual assault. Baird, who was at that time a practicing criminal barrister, delivered sessions during the course. She spoke of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding rape, such as there being a typical victim and perpetrator, and also about the ways in which women are blamed for "bringing it on themselves" if they had any physical contact with her rapist before the attack.

Baird went down extremely well with the prosecutors. She told them that in order to secure more convictions, they had to be at least as well equipped with all the facts of the case, and of the research around rape, as the defence. Baird certainly cares about rape and its consequences.

Now here is the problem. The government can try all the tweaking of laws possible, and go out on a limb to introduce measures that may dispel myths held by judge and jury, and it might help a bit. It can clarify, and re-clarify the issues of consent, and attempt to stop the introduction of the previous sexual history of complainants. Such measures, however, will only be successful if rigorously applied by the judge, and adhered to by the jury.

In 2003, I was part of a research team at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, looking at the effectiveness of the restrictions in allowing previous sexual history as part of the defence in rape trials. Much of the time, the defence snuck such evidence in without the prosecution or judge even noticing, or applied to have it heard and succeeded.

During breaks in the trial, I heard both prosecution and defence lawyers joke with each other about the complainant, her evidence, and in one instance, her underwear (which was being displayed as an exhibit). Outside of the court, during one case involving a 15-year-old complainant and an adult man, so-called specially trained police officers were having a laugh about the sexual positions described by the defendant during his evidence, all within earshot of the complainant's family. Like all the other cases I observed, the defendant was acquitted.

Time after time, I observed, both in CPS case files and in court, the police did not gather evidence at the scene, the CPS were reluctant to proceed to trial because the complainant had some sort of relationship with the defendant, and judges did not ensure the law was properly applied.

There is no doubt that reports in the press about so-called false allegations of rape have increased dramatically, to the point where much of the general public believes that most women "make it up".

There is little point in telling juries at rape trials about the psychological impact of rape, as Baird may well propose, if the jury does not consider any act to be "real rape" unless a man jumps out and grabs a virgin nun and ravishes her in the bushes, while holding a knife to her throat and wearing a black mask. Any reform to the current law will fail unless the government runs a massive awareness campaign, along the same lines of those to deter drink driving and smoking. If it were to do that, and educate the public about the realities of rape, by the time they sit on rape trials as jurors, people might just understand that all rape is "real rape". Baird, as I said earlier, cares about rape. If she could persuade the Treasury to spend some serous money on public education, we would undoubtedly see a significant rise in the numbers of men committing this hideous crime convicted.