(MintPress) — It’s typically an issue of he says, she says. And in today’s society, too many would rather take “his” word for it, lawmakers included.
Considering most rapes take place behind closed doors, victims are left with a sense of trepidation when it comes to reporting the crime, due to fear that society may turn around and point the finger at them or choose not to believe them at all. If the dialogue in politics today surrounding the issue of rape gives any indication of what’s to come, change may not be on the near horizon.
The issue of addressing rape in a responsible and fair way is relatively new to U.S. society, as education programs regarding the crime only began to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s, prompted by the psychological community. During this time, the widespread notion was that, if a rape occurred by an acquaintance, then it couldn’t have been legitimate — the woman must have consented.
And while decades have passed since that time of an attempt to reverse America’s train of thought, there still seems to be an issue of taking rape seriously — in the judicial system, the political world and American society as a whole.
Rape and politics
A recent comment made by Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican, highlighted this exact issue. In an interview with a St. Louis Fox affiliate channel, Akin used the term “legitimate rape” when discussing his stance on abortion.
“It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” he said.
Aside from a flawed sense of science, the very use of the word “legitimate” highlights an underlying notion within the rape debate. There’s still a tendency to look at some rapes as the crimes they are, and give excuse to others.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, followed up Akin’s comment, saying that rape was a form of conception when discussing his opposition to abortion. His comment was met with criticism from those who saw it as insensitive for the victims of the violent crime.
Akin later apologized for his comments, yet the off-the-cuff remarks created a firestorm of anger among women — both Republican and Democrat. Even the notoriously conservative snarky Ann Coulter condemned Akin’s remarks, referring to him as a “selfish swine” and calling for his resignation.
While Akin’s comments garnered a lot of attention, he’s not the only one to address the crime of rape in an insensitive way. In 2011, the Colorado Independent released a transcript of a conversation with a woman who was a victim of rape and Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck. Buck was running as a Republican for U.S. Senate; he lost the election.
The transcript reveals the issue when it comes to the shift of blame in rape cases. Throughout the conversation, Buck alleges that because the woman allowed the perpetrator to enter her apartment, he would not take on the case, alluding that the blame was in some way placed on her. This was despite a police report that confirmed the perpetrator woke her up after having sex with her and apologized. It also indicated the perpetrator recalled her saying no.
“I’m telling you (the victim) that’s what the circumstances suggest, to people, including myself, who have looked at it. Although you never said the word yes, but the appearance is of consent,” he said to the victim, according to the transcript.
Does reporting always help?
Even when rapes are reported, it seems they’re often looked at as an inferior crime — one that doesn’t always resonate as an act of violence.
Just last year, a community in Texas pointed the finger at an 11-year-old girl for a gang rape she endured, saying the clothing and makeup she was wearing was an open invitation to be subjected to an act of violence that leaves emotional and psychological scars for the rest of a woman’s life.
Take the situation in Detroit, as another example, where in 2009 11,300 rape kits were discovered on the shelves of a police annex building. That’s 11,300 cases; 11,300 victims whose crimes were ignored.
Since then, 400 of those kits have been investigated, according to WDTV 4 in Detroit. Of the kits tested, the city’s prosecutors office has discovered that 21 men were responsible for multiple rapes, qualifying such individuals as “serial rapists,” with a propensity to commit the violent act again.
That still leaves 900 women without answers to the crimes, and the knowledge that their cases have been cast aside, literally. While the Detroit incident is no doubt shocking, it’s not exactly unheard of. It wasn’t until 2011 when Illinois passed a law requiring all rape kits be tested by police — and that was considered a progressive law, according to a story published in the New York Times.
The law passed after Human Rights Watch issued a report exposing Illinois’ failure to address the issue of rape, documenting a backlog of nearly 1,500 rape kits that had gone untested from 1995 to 2010. The crimes, it could be argued, and the victims, were not taken seriously.
“Illinois’ failure to test DNA evidence is not only an insult to rape victims — it puts all women at risk by leaving rapists who could be identified at large, some of whom may attack again,” Human Rights Watch researcher Sarah Tofte said in a press release. “The data suggest that Illinois law enforcement just doesn’t see rape as a serious crime that’s worthy of time and resources.”
The psychology of victim blame
The knee-jerk reaction of society and politicians to cases of rape are varied, but there’s often an air of skepticism when it comes to the belief that a woman was subjected to non consensual sex. And it’s not just men who tend to look at the issue of rape in this light. According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, even women who feel vulnerable to rape tend to blame rape victims.
In 2005, Amnesty International commissioned a report as part of its Stop Violence Against Women campaign, which looked at what the human rights organization refers to as the “blame culture.” The opinion poll found that 12 percent of people in the U.K. felt the woman was responsible for the rape if she was known to have many partners, regardless of the situation at hand. Thirty percent of people put blame on the woman if she had been drinking.
“This poll shows that a disturbingly large proportion of the public blame women themselves for being raped,” said Amnesty International United Kingdom’s Kate Allen in a statement. “It is shocking that so many people will lay the blame for being raped at the feet of women themselves and the government must launch a new drive to counteract this sexist ‘blame culture.’”
Do politicians lead the way forward?
With thousands of rape kits in “waiting” throughout the nation, society is not only tasked with battling the stereotypes manifested in language and thought patterns, but also the actual prosecution within the U.S. judicial system.
So why is this? Why is there a tendency to disrupt those who step forward to press charges for a violent crime? While the U.K. and U.S. may be considered evolved in the issue of women’s rights, there is clearly work to be done when it comes to looking at rape as one would any other crime.
While lawmakers are tasked with determining the way of the future, they hold a great deal of the burden when it comes to changing societal standards toward rape prosecution. So long as they continue to differentiate between “legitimate” and non legitimate rape, the future doesn’t look too bright.