Although I acknowledge that there are many reasons for this, I belive the main reason is public opinion. Whilst researching an article on domestic violence in Knowle West, Bristol, which happens to be the area with the highest domestic abuse rate in the south west - I interveiwed a domestic abuse response worker, Karen. She told me just how hard it is to convince a jury to belive that you have been raped.
Karen also worked with rape victims as well as domestic abuse victims. She told me how she would take the women through the degrading process of internal examiniations, extensive police questioning and sometimes ID parades.
After going through all that trauma, the woman has to then stand up in court and be cross examined, often being accused of provoking the attack by wearing provocative clothing, being drunk, or even just knowing the perpetrator. These are all things that women have to apolgise for and are made to feel guilty for. They are also things that some members of the public see as evidence that the woman was asking to be attacked.
One survey shows that 33% of the public thought that if a woman wore a short skirt or was drunk then she deserved to be raped. It is no wonder so many women do not report being raped. Would you?
The problem is not all the misguided and stereotypical opinions that preside in culture, rape cases often boil down to the womans word against the mans. The standard of proof a jury must judge the case by is if it is 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the woman was raped. How can jurys working within this framework be expected to convict rapists? how can you be 100% sure, beyond all reasonable doubt that a man intended to rape a woman when they can plead it was consensual?
The odds are certainly stacked against you, unless you have been attacked by a stranger, were not intoxicated or wearing provoctive clothing and were beaten and bruised - only then does the rapist seem to be convicted. As in the case of Alice Sebold, who writes about her ordeal and the justice system regarding rape in her book Lucky.
Anyone who watched the Channel 4 programme aired last year, Consent, will have seen a powerful example of this 'justice' system at work. I was traumatised myself after seeing the programme, in which a fictional woman was raped by a work collegue. The programme used actors and the fictional trial was played out in a real court with real judges, barristors and jury.
Not suprisingly, the jury did not find the defendant guilty - an example of the outcome of rape cases every day in this country. What sickened me about this programme particularly was watching the jury deliberate over the verdict. Seeing a woman, roughly my age, flippantly suggest that the victim should have been able to fight off the man and was therefore lying about the rape because she was jelous of her colleges promotion at work, was disturbing to say the least.
To think that jurys every day have to make the decision that a woman has lied about being raped - largely because of the framework of the English Law system - makes me realise that we are not much better off than the women locked up in the Middle East.
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