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What is the "Rape Culture?"

Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women's bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women's rights and safety.

Rape Culture affects every woman. The rape of one woman is a degradation, terror, and limitation to all women. Most women and girls limit their behavior because of the existence of rape. Most women and girls live in fear of rape. Men, in general, do not. That's how rape functions as a powerful means by which the whole female population is held in a subordinate position to the whole male population, even though many men don't rape, and many women are never victims of rape. This cycle of fear is the legacy of Rape Culture.

Examples of Rape Culture

Blaming the victim ("She asked for it!")

Trivializing sexual assault ("Boys will be boys!")

Sexually explicit jokes

Tolerance of sexual harassment

Inflating false rape report statistics

Publicly scrutinizing a victim's dress, mental state, motives, and history

Gratuitous gendered violence in movies and television

Defining "manhood" as dominant and sexually aggressive

Defining "womanhood" as submissive and sexually passive

Pressure on men to "score"

Pressure on women to not appear "cold"

Assuming only promiscuous women get raped

Assuming that men don't get raped or that only "weak" men get raped

Refusing to take rape accusations seriously

Teaching women to avoid getting raped instead of teaching men not to rape

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Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women's bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women's rights and safety.

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The most immediate person affected by sexual violence is the victim/survivor, but the effects of sexual violence also go far beyond individual survivors, impacting their closest relationships as well as impacting communities and our society at large.

Impact on the survivor*

Each survivor reacts to sexual violence in their own unique way. Personal style, culture, and context of the survivor's life may affect these reactions. Some express their emotions while others prefer to keep their feelings inside. Some may tell others right away what happened, others will wait weeks, months, or even years before discussing the assault, if they ever choose to do so. It is important to respect each person's choices and style of coping with this traumatic event. Whether an assault was completed or attempted, and regardless of whether it happened recently or many years ago, it may impact daily functioning. A wide range of reactions can impact victims. Some common emotional, psychological and physical reactions follow.

Some health outcomes can be fatal such as suicide, homicide, maternal mortality and AIDS related deaths.

Impact on loved ones

When someone is a victim of sexual violence, it affects not only the survivor, but also all of the people around them. Sexual violence can affect many people in a victim/survivor's life: parents, friends, partners, children, spouses, classmates and/or co-workers.

Part of what makes it so difficult for loved ones is not knowing what to say or do, but there are ways to offer constructive help as well as for you to get support. In addition to the information below, RVA offers free confidential services to anyone who has been affected by sexual violence, including loved ones.

Let them know that you believe them

All too often, disclosure is met by skepticism or outright disbelief. Simply letting a survivor know that you believe them and that you stand behind them is meaningful. Remember that although you may be having a strong reaction to what happened, it's important to focus on the feelings and reactions of the survivor rather than your own.

Allow the survivor to make his or her own decisions

This point can be very difficult, it can be very tempting to "take over" for a while in an attempt to help the survivor deal with the rape. It is important to remember that because of the rape, the survivor felt a loss of control over their life. Reestablishing that control is very important. Try to defer to a survivor's decisions, even if they decide to let you make some decisions. Then at least that was their choice and not yours. If a survivor wants to talk, try to be an open listener. If they prefer not to talk about the assault, then try to be supportive in other ways, letting them know that you care about him/her and are willing to listen at a later time if so desired.

Educate yourself about the myths of rape

A great deal of harm is done, often unintentionally, to survivors because the people around them believe the myths that surround rape. Rape is never the fault of the survivor, but rather the fault of the rapist. Although this sounds like a simple, even obvious, fact, much of the misinformation that exists points to the victim as being responsible for the rape. Educating yourself allows you to provide informed, compassionate support. Learn more about the most common myths about sexual violence.

Be ready to listen

Being a willing listener, who acknowledges the feelings of a person, makes a significant positive impact. Sometimes it's very useful to simply be with a person and create a safe silence. Non-judgmental support helps survivors tremendously as they recover from this traumatic event. If the victim/survivor you care about or you are in need of support, RVA provides counseling services free of charge. You can also call the 24-hour Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline at any time at 1-888-293-2080.

Help Resilience to help others
Your tax deductible donation to Resilience will help to continue providing services to victims/survivors of sexual violence and their loved ones.

Impact on communities**

As with any form of violence, sexual violence tears at the fabric of community well-being. Schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, campuses, and cultural or religious communities may feel fear, anger, or disbelief if a sexual assault happened in their community.

Additionally, there are financial costs to communities. These costs can include medical and mental health services, legal expenses, lost work time and productivity, theft and damage to property, and the incalculable lost contributions of individuals affected by sexual violence.

Although the economic costs of rape and sexual assault are hard to quantify and the data is limited, the existing research indicates that the costs are great. Various research studies have examined the quantifiable cost per rape, accounting for such costs as medical and victim services, loss of productivity, and law enforcement resources. Researchers also generally agree that intangible costs, such as decreased quality of life, though difficult to monetize, are also a necessary part of the cost calculus for sexual assault. (Many researchers, in fact, believe the intangible costs are especially high in cases of sexual assault, due to the serious physical and mental health consequences for survivors.) Each of the studies examined in the White House Council on Women and Girls 2014 Report Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action used a somewhat different methodology, but all found the costs to be significant -ranging from $87,000 to $240,776 per rape. ( Miller, T.R., Cohen ,M.A. & Wiersema, B.(1996). Victim costs and consequences: A new look. National Institute of Justice.)

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (1996) the cost of crime to victims is an estimated $450 billion per year. Rape is the most costly to its victims, totaling $127 billion annually. According to the 1995 U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, sexual harassment alone cost the federal government an estimated $327 million in losses associated with job turnover, sick leave, and individual and group productivity among federal employees.

Fifty percent of rape victims lost or were forced to quit their jobs in the year following their rapes due to the severity of their reactions (Ellis, Atkeson & Calhoun, 1981). Scholars at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health indicated that development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is likely in 50 to 95 percent of rape cases (1999). Lifetime income loss, due to sexual violence in adolescence, is estimated at $241,600 (MacMillan, 2000).

In another study, the National Crime Victimization Survey found that between 2005-2010, 58% of female sexual assault victims were injured, 35% of whom received medical treatment.

For women who are raped by an intimate partner, about 36.2% are physically injured and, of those, 31% receive some type of medical care. NCIPC (2003). Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 2003. The injuries for intimate-partner rapes range from scratches, bruises, or welts to lacerations, broken bones, dislocated joints, head or spinal cord injuries, chipped or broken teeth, or internal injuries. (NCIPC 2003) Nearly 80% of those who receive medical care are treated in a hospital, and 43.6% of those victims spend one or more nights there. (NCIPC 2003)

A 2003 CDC report on the costs of intimate partner violence found that the average medical cost for victims who received treatment was $2,084 per victimization. In half of these cases, private or group health insurers were the primary source of payment; survivors bore most of the financial burden one-fourth of the time. Many survivors incur at least some out-of-pocket costs for their medical care.

Also among intimate-partner rape survivors, more than one-fifth lose time from paid work, with an average loss of 8.1 days. Additionally, over one-eighth report losing time from household chores, with an average of 13.5 days lost. Nationally, rape survivors lose an estimated 1.1 million days of activity each year. (NCIPC 2003)

Together, we can help

A 2006 study found that when victims receive advocate assisted services following assaults, like the 24-hour crisis response RVA provides to 14 hospitals across Chicago, they receive more helpful information, referrals, and services and experience less secondary trauma or re-victimization by medical and legal systems (Campbell, 2006). Furthermore, the same study found that when advocates are present in the legal and medical proceedings following rape, victims fare better in both the short-and long-term, experiencing less psychological distress, physical health struggles, sexual risk-taking behaviors, self-blame, guilt, and depression. Rape survivors with advocates were 59% more likely to have police reports taken than survivors without advocates, whose reports were only taken 41% of the time.

Your support, too, makes a difference. How you respond to a victim/survivor can positively impact their healing process. In studies of sexual assault survivors, receiving social support has been associated with many positive outcomes, including positive life change and growth as well as reduced PTSD and depressive symptoms ( Borja, Callahan, & Long, 2006; Filipas & Ullman, 2001; Schumm, Briggs-Phillips, & Hobfoll, 2006). Some of these studies found that the greater the amount of support survivors reported receiving, the fewer PTSD symptoms they had.

*Taken from Impact of Sexual Violence Fact Sheet, 2010, National Sexual Violence Resource Center

**Adapted from Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action, 2014, White House Council on Women and Girls Report, and Economic Costs of Sexual Assault, Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault

References

Borja SE, Callahan JL, Long PJ. Positive and negative adjustment and social support of sexual assault survivors. J Trauma Stress. 2006 Dec; 19(6):905-14.

Ellis, E.M., Atkeson, B.M., & Calhoun, K.S. (1981). An assessment of long-term reaction to rape, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 90:3, 263-266.

Erdreich, B.L., Slavet, B.S., & Amador, A.C. (1995). Sexual harassment in the federal workplace: Trends, progress, continuing challenges. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

Filipas, HH, Ullman SE. Social reactions to sexual assault victims from various support sources. Violence Vict. 2001 Dec; 16(6):673-92

MacMillan, R. (2000). Adolescent victimization and income deficits in adulthood: Rethinking the costs of criminal violence from a life-course perspective. Criminology, 38, 553-577.

Miller, T.R., Cohen, M.A., & Wiersema, B. (1996). Victim costs and consequences: A new look. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice

Population Information Program. (1999). Population reports: Ending violence against women. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Schumm, JA, Briggs-Phillips M, Hobfoll SE. Cumulative interpersonal traumas and social support as risk and resiliency factors in predicting PTSD and depression among inner-city women. J Trauma Stress. 2006 Dec; 19(6):825-36.

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The most immediate person affected by sexual violence is the victim/survivor, but the effects of sexual violence also go far beyond individual survivors, impacting their closest relationships as well as impacting communities and our society at large. Each survivor reacts to sexual violence in their own unique way.

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The original article is no longer available but it was found here

PEOPLE TRY TO POKE HOLES IN THE PRISON ABOLITION MOVEMENT BY ASKING "WHAT ABOUT RAPISTS, DO YOU WANT THEM JUST WANDERING AROUND?" BUT THEY ALREADY ARE.
TW/CW: mentions of sexual assault and details of r/pe.
It took me two years to tell anyone I had been raped. I won't go into details today-or maybe ever-about my experience with sexual assault. I don't want people to lose themselves in their attempts to undermine my experience and miss my central point: the criminal justice system cannot heal the wounds of sexual trauma.

I grew into my understanding of prison abolition over the course of many years. In reading The New Jim Crow and doing further research, I began to understand the prison abolition movement as a set of moral and political beliefs that takes into account all intersections of oppression. From patriarchy and the school to prison pipeline, to other forms of racism, ableism, etc. Prison abolition is a movement that allows people to imagine seismic changes to the ways we address these societal ills and gives us permission to work outside the current confines of our penal system to affect the lives of our families, neighbors, communities.

Because of this, by Jan. 2017 when I was assaulted, I knew I could never in good conscience become a part of the U.S. penal system-even as a victim. There are a million reasons I didn't report my rape. My rapist's immigration status, my own internalized whorephobia, my self-doubt, my fear of being laid bare in front of the media or a court or even just an ER room. I kept questioning: is it possible that this was all just a misunderstanding?

Rape is not about sexual desire, even for the perpetrator. It is nothing more or less than a twisted externalization of power. He knew he was making me uncomfortable, he knew he was frightening me, he gloried in it. After he had finished, he drove me home at 3 am; drunk and manic, speeding through red lights, ecstatic at my terror.

When I walked in the door to my house, I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against the blissfully cold door, and locked it. He knew where I lived. I double-checked every door and window in the house. Then, despite having watched almost every episode of SVU which warns against this, I sat down on the floor of my shower, tucked my knees under my chin, and stayed there. I let the water burn away his smell, the stickiness of his fingers, and his semen. After what felt like years, I picked myself up, put on my pajamas, and set my alarm for 7:25 am.

I saw him again two days later, wanting to prove to myself that this had all been a misunderstanding. I wanted a do-over. Again, he assaulted me. But how could I report anything if I had quite literally gone back for seconds? Who would ever believe me? How would I ever forgive myself for putting another brown man in jail? How would that help? I went about forgetting him.

Two months after I left his car bleeding and in tears, he texted me randomly. I began to feel like I saw him everywhere. In every man I passed on the street, out of the corner of my eye in the grocery store. I heard him in every creak of my house and rustle of trees at night. I grew accustomed to sleeping less and fitfully, double and triple-checking my locks, but could never bring myself to say aloud that I had been a victim of rape. I buried him and his smell and his fingers deep in the recesses of my mind and went about forgetting him. Who goes back for more?

I finally told my therapist what had happened, barely audibly, in January 2019. The memories I had so carefully buried began to thaw in earnest when I entered a loving and thoughtful and equal partnership. I could no longer keep them small, portable, manageable now that I knew how it felt-what it meant-to be respected and adored.

And again, even now that people knew, even now that I had been believed, I knew I could never pursue legal action. What good would it do me and my healing process to have him in jail? Even if the police did believe me and the jury agreed and then the sentencing was carried out " appropriately"? When people go to jail for rape they are further embedded in cycles of sexual violence, having to deal with prison's formal and informal power systems which are enforced in large part through the use of rape and assault.

Rape culture teaches that power comes from domination which can be performed using the tools of sexual aggression and violence. All of these things which brought him to sexually assault me in the first place would only become more a part of his identity and his survival strategy if he were forced to go to prison. And when released, he would be more likely to assert his domination through sexual violence than ever. This is not a healing cycle for either victims or perpetrators. No one-not even a sexual abuser-deserves to be assaulted.

People love to try to poke holes in the prison abolition movement by saying "what about rapists, do you want them just wandering around?" But the reality is, they do wander around. Between unreported rapes, and rapes that never go to trial, and trials lost, and plea bargains accepted, fewer than 6% are arrested and fewer than 1% are convicted. Beyond that, though, placing people in environments in which sexual violence is the currency of survival is not making anyone safer.

Prison abolitionists acknowledge that in some cases societal separation (over various time lengths with various parameters) is necessary but disagree that a prison system can adequately address the ultimate causes of rape. Pilot programs have long been established across the country that have provided an alternative to the prison model of justice, forcing abusers to reckon with the consequences of their actions, feel the pain they have inflicted keenly, and pay their newfound knowledge forward, all without the use of prisons and jails. Is that not the goal of a restorative justice system?

In my ideal world, for my specific situation, I want my rapist to go to therapy. I want him to figure out why he felt the need to assert his dominance through coercion, fear, guilt, and intimidation. I want him to really feel what he did to me. I want him to know he has stolen and dominated almost three years of my life. I want him to know that I still have panic attacks about him. I still hear him in every creak, in every rustle of branches. I still replay my rape late into the night, trying to figure out when I could have gotten away, what I could have done differently. I flinch at the sound of his name, common as it is. I see him out of the corner of my eye in the grocery store even though we're well over 500 miles apart. I feel his sticky fingers.

And yet I never want to talk to him again, and I never want to hear from him again. I do not want his apology. The best ending to this story is that he will take the pain that fed his actions, process it, and use it to teach others how easy it can be to externalize your trauma and how important it is to find people you trust who can help you parse it out. I want him to say I forced someone to have sex with me and I will never, ever, be able to live that down, but I can help make sure that it doesn't happen again.

I'm doing my part. I just want him to do his.
Miriam Perez-Putnam is based in Pittsburgh, PA where she lives with her spouse and a truly chaotic number of pets. She is on an endless quest for the perfect bloody mary. Hot takes can be found @perezident_mir

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Surviving Rape as a Prison Abolitionist | TransformHarm.org

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The original article is no longer available but it was found here PEOPLE TRY TO POKE HOLES IN THE PRISON ABOLITION MOVEMENT BY ASKING "WHAT ABOUT RAPISTS, DO YOU WANT THEM JUST WANDERING AROUND?" BUT THEY ALREADY ARE. TW/CW: mentions of sexual assault and details of r/pe. It took me...

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Women at a SlutWalk protest in Berlin. The walk was held in response to a Toronto police officer who said women shouldn't dress like "sluts" if they want to avoid being raped. (Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Rape culture exists because we don't believe it does. From tacit acceptance of misogyny in everything from casual conversations with our peers to the media we consume, we accept the degradation of women and posit uncontrollable hyper-sexuality of men as the norm. But rape is endemic to our culture because there's no widely accepted cultural definition of what it actually is. As Nation contributor and co-editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes Jessica Valenti explains, "Rape is a standard result of a culture mired in misogyny, but for whatever reason-denial, self-preservation, sexism-Americans bend over backwards to make excuses for male violence." But recent headline-grabbing instances of sexual assault, from Steubenville, Ohio, to Delhi, India, are prodding Americans to become self-aware about the role we play in propagating a culture that not only allows but justifies sexual violence against women. Activists Eesha Pandit, Jaclyn Friedman, filmmaker Nuala Cabral and The Nation 's Valenti believe that we can end rape culture. They've suggested the following "Ten Things" to end our collective tolerance for violence against women and create an environment that empowers both men and women to change the status quo.

1. Name the real problems: Violent masculinity and victim-blaming. These are the cornerstones of rape culture and they go hand in hand. When an instance of sexual assault makes the news and the first questions the media asks are about the victim's sobriety, or clothes, or sexuality, we should all be prepared to pivot to ask, instead, what messages the perpetrators received over their lifetime about rape and about "being a man." Here's a tip: the right question is not, "What was she doing/wearing/saying when she was raped?" The right question is, "What made him think this is acceptable?" Sexual violence is a pervasive problem that cannot be solved by analyzing an individual situation. Learn 50 key facts about domestic violence. Here's one: the likelihood that a woman will die a violent death increases 270% once a gun is present in the home Remember, a violent act is not a tragic event done by an individual or a group of crazies. Violence functions in society as" a means of asserting and securing power."

2. Re-examine and re-imagine masculinity: Once we name violent masculinity as a root cause of violence against women, we have to ask: Is masculinity inherently violent? How can you be a man/masculine without being violent? Understand that rape is not a normal or natural masculine urge. Join organizations working to redefine masculinity and participate in the national conversations on the topic.

3. Get enthusiastic about enthusiastic consent. Rape culture relies on our collective inclination to blame the victim and find excuses for the rapist. Enthusiastic consent - the idea that we're all responsible to make sure that our partners are actively into whatever's going down between us sexually - takes a lot of those excuses away. Rather than looking for a "no," make sure there's an active "yes." If you adopt enthusiastic consent yourself, and then teach it to those around you, it can soon become a community value. Then, if someone is raped, the question won't be, well, what was she doing there, or did she really say no clearly enough? It will be: what did you do to make sure she was really into it? Check out this Tumblr page on enthusiastic consent.

4. Speak up for what you really really want. Because so much victim-blaming relies on outdated ideas about women and men's sexuality, taking the time to figure out what you actually want from sex for yourself and learning how to speak up about it can be a revolutionary act, and inspire others to follow suit. Bonus: it will almost always improve your sex life, too! Jaclyn Friedman wrote a whole book on the topic.

5. Get media literate. Media, like everything else we consume, is a product; someone imagined, created and implemented it. Ask the right questions about who creates media that profits off the objectification of women, especially women of color. Feed your mind and heart with media that portrays women as full human beings with the right to bodily autonomy. Go to FAAN Mail to learn how to " Talk Back" to media creators and browse their Facebook page for alternative artists. You'll not only be healthier yourself, but you'll be simultaneously calling into being a media ecosystem that will be healthier for everyone.

6. Globalize your awareness of rape culture. Yes, different societies have particularities when it comes to gender based violence, but it is counterproductive to essentialize entire nations/cultures/races. Look to global strategies-like creating momentum for the US to ratify the global Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and participate in addressing the phenomenon of rape as a tool of war. Also, let's reauthorize Violence Against Women Act before we cast aspersions on the misogyny of other cultures, shall we?

7. Know your history: For those of us who live here in the US, we must acknowledge and learn from the US's long history of state sanctioned violence. Consider the genocide of Native and First Nations people, the ever-present legacy of slavery, the lackadaisical relationship we have with due process (i.e. Japanese internment, Guantanamo) and the gendered nature of all this. There are no quick links for this one: you'll have to read some big books.

8. Take an intersectional approach. The numbers tell us most but not all of what we need to know. What the numbers can elide is the lived reality of women, LGBTQ people and others of us whose stories don't make it to the headlines. Don't forget that sex and gender are different and there are more genders than two. People who are gender-non-conforming, gender queer, trans and/or those who complicate the gender binary experience violence at disproportionate rates. Think about how a person's income, race, sexuality, and citizenship and immigration status would impact their ability to use the criminal justice system as recourse, and come up with strategies that address those challenges. Move the most vulnerable from the margin to the center to develop effective solutions.

9. Practice real politics. You may be crystal clear about your own rejection of rape culture, but when someone you know calls a woman a slut, approach him/her from a place of empathy. Try telling them that you know they probably meant no harm, but that you're concerned that they may be doing some anyhow. And then explain why. And be patient: very few of us change our views in an instant. It may take time and repetition for it to start to sink in.

10. Lobby your community. Rape culture thrives in passive acceptance of female degradation, victim-blaming and hyper-masculinity in our communities, both physical and digital. Report abuse on Facebook. Lobby college administrators for more safe spaces to discuss sexual assault on campus. One in five women are assaulted during their college years, yet many colleges don't have a competent system for reporting incidences and punishing perpetrators. Go here to learn what to do about rape on your campus.

Two More Ways to Fight Rape Culture

Don't laugh at rape. Most people aren't rapists. But most rapists believe that everyone does it. What's more, you can't tell if you're in the presence of a rapist. They don't look any different from the rest of us, and may be perfectly good company. So while it might seem harmless to you to laugh at a joke that makes light of rape, your laughter could be telling an unknown rapist in your midst that you think rape is hilarious. And what's worse: letting go of a laugh once in a while, or accidentally enabling a rapist? Your call.

Tell your story. Every political issue has a personal narrative that helps form connections to the issue and bolster support for present and future victims. Read Akiba Solomon's account of the how she bridged the personal and the political in the struggle over reproductive justice. If your personal account is not ready for an audience, start by telling your story to yourself.

It is not enough to bring individual perpetrators of rape and sexual violence to justice. Since the problem lies in a culture that is entertained by degrading acts and images of women, the solution is to look at the individual acts as a symptom of rape culture and solve it holistically. We all have a part to play in allowing rape culture to exist-so, we can all do something to eradicate it.

"Ten Things" is a monthly feature. Readers who wish to submit additions to recent Ten Things or tell us their own Ten Things ideas should use this form.

Trying to understand what rape culture means? Read Jessica Valenti on America's Rape Problem: We Refuse to Admit We Have One.

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Women at a SlutWalk protest in Berlin. The walk was held in response to a Toronto police officer who said women shouldn't dress like "sluts" if they want to avoid being raped. (Photo/Markus Schreiber) Rape culture exists because we don't believe it does.

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15 ways to end rape culture today: recognize that people neither ask for nor deserve to be abused, harassed, assaulted or raped-ever.

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Survivors of sexual violence are people, just like you. No class, creed or gender is exempt from being abused or from abusing - it can affect us all.

We hear from survivors in the immediate aftermath of their trauma, when they can be at their lowest. We support them to get their lives back on track and overcome the psychological, emotional, and physical suffering caused by their sexual assault.

After you have provided for your family and friends, please consider leaving a gift in your will to Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. This vital legacy will help prevent sexual violence and give those suffering from that trauma the opportunity to heal.

Whether you would like more information about leaving a legacy to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, or would like to let us know the fantastic news that you have already decided to do so, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Annie or Colette at fundraising@rcc.ie or on 01 661 4911.

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Leaving a legacy | Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

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Survivors of sexual violence are people, just like you. No class, creed or gender is exempt from being abused or from abusing - it can affect us all. We hear from survivors in the immediate aftermath of their trauma, when they can be at their lowest.

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THE OLDEST WRITTEN LAWS DESIGNATING RAPE AS A CRIME WERE PROMULGATED IN THE CODE OF HAMMURAPI ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF THE 17TH CENTURY B.C. HEBREW LAWS, SET FORTH IN THE FIRST FIVE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE PROVIDED CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR RAPE. THE EARLIEST ENGLISH COMMON LAW INCLUDED WRITTEN PROMULGATIONS OF KINGS, STARTING WITH AETHELBERT OF KENT WHO RULED IN 597 A.D. HIS LAWS AND THOSE OF OTHER KINGS DID NOT OFTEN SPECIFICALLY STATE AN ACT AS A CRIME OR CIVIL OFFENSE BUT INDICATED THE PENALTY OR COMPENSATION FOR AN ACT. IN LATER ENGLISH COMMON LAW, RAPE WAS DEFINED AS THE UNLAWFUL CARNAL KNOWLEDGE OF A FEMALE OVER 10 YEARS OF AGE BY A MAN NOT HER HUSBAND THROUGH FORCE OR AGAINST HER WILL. THIS DEFINITION HAS GENERALLY BEEN FOLLOWED WITH SOME MINOR VARIATIONS, EXCEPT THAT THE AGE OF CONSENT HAS BEEN RAISED TO A MORE REALISTIC LEVEL. RAPE EMBODIES FORCE, LACK OF CONSENT, AND SEXUAL INTERCOURSE; I.E., PENETRATION OF THE MALE ORGAN INTO THE FEMALE VULVA OR LABIA; THE MALE ORGAN DOES NOT HAVE TO REACH THE FEMALE VAGINA TO CONSTITUTE RAPE. EMISSION IS NOT AN ELEMENT OF RAPE AND IF IT SHOULD OCCUR PRIOR TO AND WITHOUT PENETRATION A WOMAN HAS NOT BEEN RAPED. IT IS RAPE IF A WOMAN IS ASLEEP, HAS FAINTED, OR IS OTHERWISE UNCONSCIOUS AND A MAN HAS INTERCOURSE WITH HER, EVEN THOUGH ACTUAL FORCE IS ABSENT. INTERCOURSE IS RAPE BY FRAUD UNDER SOME STATUTES IF A WOMAN IS GIVEN A SUBSTANCE WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE THAT UNDULY EXCITES HER SEXUAL DESIRES OR PREVENTS OR LESSENS HER RESISTANCE. (DEP)

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THE OLDEST WRITTEN LAWS DESIGNATING RAPE AS A CRIME WERE PROMULGATED IN THE CODE OF HAMMURAPI ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF THE 17TH CENTURY B.C. HEBREW LAWS, SET FORTH IN THE FIRST FIVE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE PROVIDED CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR RAPE.

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History of the Rape Crisis Movement and Sexual Violence Prevention – Prevent Connect Wiki

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From the beginning of the anti-rape movement in the early 1970s, education has been an important component of the response to sexual violence. Initial efforts focused on raising awareness about the prevalence and impact of the experience of rape, bringing forward the voices of survivors, and emphasi…

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Section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 provides protection to complainants in proceedings involving sexual offences by restricting evidence or questions about their previous sexual history by or on behalf of the accused, subject to exceptions and with the leave of the court. These restrictions are intended to achieve the right balance between protection of the complainant and a defendant's right to a fair trial. It might be useful to refer to Chapter 4 on tackling rape myths and stereotypes.

The legal framework

There is a general prohibition on the admission of previous sexual history evidence and on questions about previous sexual history unless the court gives leave.

Section 41(1) provides that:

''If at a trial a person is charged with a sexual offence, then, except with the leave

of the court-

1. no evidence may be adduced, and

2. no question may be asked in cross-examination,

by or on behalf of any accused at the trial, about any sexual behaviour of the complainant.''

"Sexual offence"

"Sexual offence" includes:

any offence under Part 1 Sexual Offences Act 2003

offences as outlined in Section 62 YJCEA 1999 or any relevant superseded offence.

"Sexual behaviour"

Section 42(1)(c) of the 1999 Act provides:

'''sexual behaviour' means any sexual behaviour or other sexual experience, whether or not involving any accused or other person, but excluding (except in section 41(3)(c)(i) and (5)(a)) anything alleged to have taken place as part of the event which is the subject matter of the charge against the accused'

Sexual behaviour potentially includes:

sexual activity with the defendant or another;

engaging in sexually-charged messaging on Facebook as in R v D [2011] EWCA Crim 2305;

Completion of sexual quizzes on the internet - R v Ben-Rajab and Baccar [2012]1Cr App R4, in which the Court of Appeal took the view that the expression is wide enough to embrace the activity of viewing pornography or engaging in sexually-charged messaging over a live internet connection and included answering questions in a sexually explicit quiz;

secondary evidence of sexual behaviour (e.g. abortion and paternity suits). In R v P(R) [2013] EWCA Crim 2331, a complainant's visit to an abortion clinic with defendant was deemed inadmissible. The Court of Appeal held that a question about an abortion may amount to a question about a complainant's previous sexual activity.

Proceedings to which Section 41 applies

The provisions of s.41 apply equally to trials in the Crown Court and magistrates' courts and in addition to trials applies to committal for sentence, applications to dismiss following a notice of transfer, Newton hearings and the hearing of appeals.

Section 42(3) of the 1999 Act provides:

''Section 41 applies in relation to the following proceedings as it applies to a trial, namely-

1. proceedings before a magistrates' court inquiring into an offence as examining justices,

2. the hearing of an application under paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 6 to the Criminal Justice Act 1991 (application to dismiss charge following notice of transfer of case to Crown Court),

3. the hearing of an application under paragraph 2(1) of Schedule 3 to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (application to dismiss charge by person sent for trial under section 51 of that Act),

4. any hearing held, between conviction and sentencing, for the purpose of determining matters relevant to the court's decision as to how the accused is to be dealt with, and

5. the hearing of an appeal,

and references (in section 41 or this section) to a person charged with an offence accordingly include a person convicted of an offence.''

Procedure and time limits

Procedures and time limits are set out in Section 43 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 and Part 22 Criminal Procedure Rules 2020.

It is crucial that prosecutors are fully conversant with these rules. The key rules are highlighted below:

Any application must be in writing and must be made as soon as reasonably practicable after becoming aware of the grounds for doing so, and in any event not more than 14 days after the prosecutor discloses material on which the application is based (Rule 22.4(1))

The application must identify the issue to which the defendant says the complainant's sexual behaviour is relevant and give particulars of any evidence that the defendant wants to introduce, the questions that the defendant wants to ask and the particular gateway(s) relied upon. The application should also detail the name and date of birth of any witness whose evidence about the complainant's sexual behaviour the defendant wants to introduce. (Rule 22.4(2))

The prosecution have 14 days to respond to the defence application (Rule 22.4(6).

The prosecution cannot consent to an application made to avoid the restriction imposed by Section 41. It may be, in some circumstances, that the prosecution might not oppose an application because, for example, the admission of the evidence was necessary to ensure a fair trial. However, whether or not the evidence is admissible is a matter of judgement that can only be exercised by the trial judge.

The CPR permit the court to vary this timetable, even after the expiry of the time limits.(Rule 22.8)

Applications to permit sexual history evidence must be heard in private and in the absence of the complainant. This is provided for by section 43. A failure to comply with this statutory requirement is to rehearse all of the arguments in front of the public gallery. After hearing the application, the judge should state their reasons for either allowing or refusing the application in open court.

Rule 22.4 requires any applicant to give particulars of any evidence they want to introduce and any questions they want to ask. It is extremely important that the defence put in writing, either in the written application or at the hearing in private, what questions they propose to put to the complainant. It is only by insisting on this that the court will be able to maintain a degree of control over the questioning if it is permitted and will prevent the defence straying into areas that would be forbidden by Section 41 and outside the parameters established by the Judge's ruling.

The rules also require the prosecutor to inform a complainant of the court's decision as soon as reasonably practicable and explain any arrangements that as a result will be made for them to give evidence. This was already required by the CPS guidance 'Speaking to Witnesses at Court' The court must allow time for this to happen.

Four gateways to admissibility

An application by or on behalf of an accused at trial can only succeed if the court is satisfied:

that one of the four ''gateways'' applies, namely:

41(3)(a) (evidence or question relates to an issue which is not an issue of consent),

41(3)(b) (relates to consent and the sexual behaviour is alleged to have taken place ''at or about the same time as'' the event in issue),

41(3)(c) (relates to consent and the sexual behaviour to which the evidence or question relates is so similar to behaviour which, according to the evidence, took place as part of the event or other behaviour by the complainant at about that time that the similarity cannot reasonably be explained as a coincidence), or

41(5) (relates to and rebuts evidence adduced by the prosecution about the complainant's sexual behaviour); and

that a refusal of leave might have the effect of rendering unsafe a conclusion of the jury or (as the case may be) the court on any relevant issue in the case

Gateway 1 - Section 41(3)(a) Evidence or question relates to an issue which is not an issue of consent

Section 41(3)(a) applies where the evidence or question relates to a relevant issue in the case and that issue is not an issue of consent. In R v A (no 2) [2002] 1 A.C 45 Lord Hope referred to evidence which is proffered for specific reasons pointing to guilt or innocence as opposed to impermissible generalisations about consent. He gave four examples of issues falling within "issue other than consent".
a) the defence of reasonable belief in consent
This is likely to be of limited application since in accordance with the 2003 Sexual Offences Act a belief in consent must be reasonable to afford a defence. There will be very few cases where this example will be of practical application as issues of belief in consent are often inextricably bound up with the issue of consent. Since the enactment of Section 41 there have been a number of cases where the Court of Appeal have upheld the refusal to grant leave to admit sexual history evidence on the basis that such evidence did not go to the issue of a reasonable and honest belief in consent and was intended, instead, to suggest that because s/he had had sexual intercourse with someone else, she was likely to have had consensual sex with the accused.

In Harrison [2006] EWCA Crim 1543 the trial judge's refusal to permit questioning about the complainant having sex with a third party three hours prior to the rape was upheld and was properly prohibited by Section 41.

In Winter [2008] EWCA Crim 3 a complainant telling a suspect she was having a relationship with another man did not provide the suspect with a reasonable basis for belief that she was consenting to sex with him.
b) Complainant had motive to fabricate evidence or was biased against the accused c) There is alternative explanation for the physical conditions on which the Crown relies to establish that intercourse took place
Whilst this was suggested by Lord Hope as a possible example of this gateway, it is extremely limited in scope as the evidence must relate to a "relevant issue in the case" and very often a motive to fabricate will not be a relevant issue. It is important to scrutinise with care the circumstances of the allegation and the reasons it is being suggested why there is an alleged motive to lie. There may be some cases where there will have to be a reference to the sexual behaviour of the complainant when exploring a motive to fabricate to ensure a fair trial but these types of cases should be approached with care. An example of such a case is R v F [2005] 2 Cr App R 13.

Evidence of a previous sexual liaison with a third party might explain why the complainant contracted a sexual transmitted infection which the prosecution rely upon as evidence of penetration by the defendant. Similarly evidence of complainant pregnancy or might bring into play previous sexual activity as alternative explanation for infection.
d) Detail of the complainant's account must have come from other sexual activity before or after event which provides explanation for knowledge of that activity
In R v L [2015] EWCA Crim 741 the prosecution relied upon medical evidence which suggested penile penetration had caused damage to the hymen. The defence were able to reference a previous rape of the same complainant when she was overseas.

An issue has arisen in cases where the prosecution argues that complainant would not be able to describe the sexual activity if they had not experienced it with the suspect. The scenario is likely to be unusual since even young children may gain knowledge of sexual practices from a variety of sources e.g. playground or sex education see case of R v MF [2005] EWCA Crim 3376.

Gateway 2 - Section 41(3)(b) Consent and Contemporaneity

This subsection applies if the evidence or question relates to a relevant issue in the case and that issue is an issue of consent and the sexual behaviour of the complainant to which the evidence or question relates is alleged to have taken place at or about the same time as the event which is the subject matter of the charge against the accused.

There are no specific time limits around what constitutes 'about the same time' as any time limitation risks being arbitrary. Closeness in time will be a factor when considering relevance but the parties may have an intimate relationship and see each other only occasionally.

The tendency has been for the courts to adopt a restrictive approach, examples include:

In R v A [2001] EWCA Crim 4 Rose LJ found it impossible to construe words 'at or about the same time' as applying to events months, weeks or even days prior to the events said to give rise to the rape.

In R v A (no. 2) [2002] 1 A.C 45 Lord Slynn favoured a narrow interpretation which would not allow evidence of sexual behaviour to be adduced other than in cases where the acts relied on were 'really contemporaneous'.

It should be noted that even if the behaviour is alleged to have taken place at or about the same time as the event which is the subject matter of the charge against the accused it does not necessarily follow that it relates to an issue of consent or that the judge will be satisfied for purposes of section 41(3)(b) that a refusal might leave unsafe a decision of the jury.

Gateway 3 - Section 41(3)(c) Consent and similarity

1. to any sexual behaviour of the complainant which (according to the evidence adduced to be adduced by or on behalf of the accused) took place as part of the event which is the subject matter of the charge against the accused; or

2. to any other sexual behaviour of the complainant which (according to the evidence to be adduced) took place at or about the same time as the event the subject matter of the charge.

This subsection relates to consent and the sexual behaviour of the complainant to which the question or evidence relates is alleged to have been, in any respect, so similar

This gateway is opened when the behaviour of the complainant at the time of, or as part of, the incident complained of is so similar to other behaviour that the similarity cannot reasonably be explained as a coincidence.

The government debates preceding the enactment of the provision made clear that this exception was not designed to cover "evidence of a general approach towards consensual sex such as a predilection for one night stands, or for having consensual sex on a first date. Still less does it include the fact that the complainant has previously consented to sex with people of the same race as the defendant, or has previously had sex in a car, for example, before alleging that she was raped in a car. Such behaviour could reasonably be explained as coincidental, as it falls within the usual range of behaviour that people display" (Hansard 23 March 1999, col 1218 per Government Minister Lord Williams).

Unlike the contemporaneity gateway, there is no need for any temporal proximity. R v T [2004] EWCA Crim 1220 is an illustration of this where the similar act complained of took place three weeks prior to the alleged rape.

The following cases serve to illustrate the approach of the Courts to this gateway.

The allegation was that the complainant had met the appellant and had gone back to her flat where she had been raped. The appellant's case was that this was an act of consensual intercourse. He had later awoken to find her trying to steal his wallet. They had had a fight and he had left.

At trial the defence had made an application to cross examine the complainant about the fact that she had been a prostitute for 19 years. This was refused by the trial judge.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction and held that the fact that she was a prostitute was irrelevant to the issue of consent. The defence case here was not that the appellant was a client of the complainant when working as a prostitute and so the fact that she had numerous previous convictions for prostitution could not be said to be sufficiently similar to the circumstances of the charge so as to bring them within section 41(3)(c).

The complainant was making her way home after a night out drinking. She was heavily intoxicated and invited back to her flat a man she had met on her journey home. This was the appellant. The complainant and the appellant also invited a Polish man, whom they had met by chance, back to the flat. It was the complainant's account that she had been raped by the appellant who had also assaulted the Polish man. The issue at trial was consent.

The prosecution had disclosed the complainant's medical records in which it was recorded that the complainant had described life choices involving risky sexual behaviour. The appellant sought leave to cross examine the complainant about the details of this behaviour and her attitude to risk arguing that the risk taking in the records was similar to the risky sexual encounter when the appellant and the complainant had met.

The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's refusal to permit this cross-examination finding that there was insufficient similarity between what was described in the records and what was alleged to have happened at the hands of the appellant. The Court also made the point that cross examination would have brought into play evidence about the complainant's sexual behaviour generally and was not directed to the similarity of the conduct on the relevant occasions. Indeed, in this case, there was no dispute as to the circumstances in which the complainant found herself to be in the company of the appellant; the dispute was what had happened once they were together at the flat and the fact that she had engaged in risky casual sex previously did not mean that she had done so, consensually, on this occasion.

The complainant could recall nothing of the events of the evening. The appellant admitted that sexual intercourse had taken place but said it had been consensual. Alternatively, he had a reasonable belief in consent. He described the complainant as engaging in particular sexual activity and using particular words when doing so. He was convicted at trial.

In due course, this conviction was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission where leave was sought to admit fresh evidence. This further evidence had come to light after a campaign by the appellant's family and was provided by two men, both of whom said they had had sexual intercourse with the complainant, one before the incident the subject of the charge and one afterwards. Both of them described the complainant as behaving, during the sexual encounter, in a similar way to the manner described by the appellant Evans.

The Court admitted the fresh evidence and allowed the appeal. It was made clear that the behaviour admitted through this gateway was not confined to unusual or bizarre behaviour but it had to be sufficiently similar such that it could not reasonably be explained as a coincidence.

The Court allowed this appeal with some hesitation but found that this was a rare case. Alone, if the jury rejected the appellant's account of the complainant's behaviour on the night in question, he was left without a defence. The fact that two others had described similar behaviour with them was capable of supporting his account. This was admissible and relevant evidence and in such a case, the Court was clear that the requirements of Section 41 had to give way to the requirements of a fair trial.

What this case does make clear however is that such cases are rare and the circumstances and issues of each case must be carefully examined.

Previous Sexual Activity between the Accused and the Complainant

The prohibition in Section 41 extends to previous sexual contact between the complainant and the accused. This was an issue considered by the House of Lords in R v A when the House stated that on a strict statutory interpretation, Section 41 was incompatible with the right to a fair trial because it was capable of rendering inadmissible evidence which might be relevant to the defence of consent on a charge of rape and they cited evidence of a previous consensual sexual relationship between the parties.

The Court held that the niceties of the language of section 41(3)(c) - in particular the matter of coincidence - should be subordinated to broader considerations of relevance judged by logical and common sense criteria of time and circumstances and it is possible to read Section 41(3)( c) as subject to an implied provision that evidence or questioning which is required to ensure a fair trial under Article 6 ECHR should not be treated as inadmissible whilst due regard must always be had to the importance of seeking to protect the complainant from indignity and humiliating questions.

It is not a given that in all cases where there has been a relationship between the parties that the prohibition in Section 41 will not apply. Whether evidence of any previous sexual encounter between the parties should be admitted will be case specific and care must be taken to ensure that the restrictions imposed by Section 41 are not being circumvented. In some cases, previous sexual encounters might be very relevant; in other cases, such an encounter might be completely irrelevant. The Court's example was an isolated episode distant in time and circumstances. The case of R v S [2010] EWCA Crim 1579 is an illustration of a case where the trial judge did not permit cross examination about a previous act of sexual intercourse said to have taken place a few days prior to an incident of a violent rape committed upon a wife by her husband.

Gateway 4 - Section 41(5) The Rebuttal Gateway

1. Relates to any evidence adduced by the prosecution about any sexual behaviour of the complainant; AND

2. In the opinion of the court would go no further than is necessary to enable the evidence adduced by the prosecution to be rebutted or explained by or on behalf of the accused

This gateway applies if the evidence or question:

It is important to remember that Section 41(4) does not apply to evidence to be adduced under this sub-section but that the questioning must go no further than is necessary to enable the evidence adduced by the prosecution to be rebutted or explained.

It is also important to consider carefully whether the evidence to be rebutted is evidence adduced by the prosecution. In R v Hamadi [2007] EWCA Crim 3048 the Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's refusal to permit cross examination about the complainant's experience with a third party when the evidence to be rebutted was adduced in cross examination by defence counsel.

Restrictions on admissibility

The Court's duty under Section 41(2)

Restrictions that apply to ALL gateways

Even where one of the gateways is met the court must be satisfied (in accordance with section 41(2)(b)) that a refusal of leave might have the effect of rendering unsafe a conclusion of the jury or (as the case may be) the court on any relevant issue in the case

Evidence or question must relate to a specific instance or instances of alleged sexual behaviour (section 41(6))

Using the words of Lord Hope in R v A, it filters out cases where the evidence is not truly probative. The operation of this section can be seen in R v DB [2012] EWCA Crim 1235 where, in a case where a daughter alleged that she had been raped repeatedly by her father and, as a result, had become pregnant twice, resulting in terminations, evidence that she had had a sexual relationship at the same time with her boyfriend was admitted but not evidence that male DNA was found on her endocervical swabs belonging to another male during a medical examination conducted a few days before her ABE interview. This was sexual activity that had occurred outside the relevant time period and therefore did not assist as to any issue in the case. The only purpose would be to establish that the complainant was not telling the truth when she said in her ABE interview that she had not had sexual intercourse with anyone other than her father. There was already evidence that she had lied about that issue concerning her boyfriend. The evidence about the other man therefore was collateral to any issue in the case; it was therefore prohibited by Section 41(4).

This means that the section expressly prohibits evidence about general reputation or, for example, about the fact that the complainant was or had been a prostitute.

The Section 41(4) prohibition

Restrictions relating to Section 41(3) gateway

In accordance with Section 41(4) where the gateway is Section 41(3)(a)(b) or (c) no evidence or question shall be regarded as relating to a relevant issue in the case if the primary purpose is to impugn the credibility of the complainant as a witness.

The case of R v V [2016] EWCA Crim 1434 provides a useful illustration of the Court's approach to the application of Section 41(4). In this case the Court accepted that Section 41(4) could not prevent all evidence which had a bearing on whether the complainant was credible in the sense that she was telling the truth about the events at trial: if that were the case, the subsection "would exclude almost all defence evidence or cross-examination, as the purpose of that is almost always to suggest that the complainant is wrong and the defendant is not guilty". What is instead required is careful scrutiny of the stated reason or rationale for the proposed line of questioning. Does the proposed questioning merely seek to perpetuate the second of the twin myths identified by Lord Steyn in R v A (that "unchaste women" are less worthy of belief) or does it instead direct towards evidence on matters that have a "direct bearing" on whether or not the allegation before the jury is true? In other words, the term "credibility", when used in section 41(4), does not act to exclude evidence that undermines a complainant's account of the allegation at trial, but to prevent the introduction of evidence that generally suggests she is the type of person whose word should not be believed.

On the facts of R v V, the Court concluded that the reason for the questioning was to provide an alternative explanation for the detail of the complainant's evidence about the alleged abuse and for her distress and, specifically, to provide support for the suggestion that she may have been confused and mistaken such that she transposed abuse suffered at the hands of another to the appellant. The proposed questioning was therefore not directed at impugning the credibility of the complainant and accordingly was not prohibited by section 41(4).

Useful link: Refer to Chapter 4 on tackling myths and stereotypes.

False allegations

The restriction in Section 41 does not prohibit questions about a complainant's previous false complaints of rape and sexual assault because this is not evidence or questioning about any sexual behaviour of the complainant. However, before any questions are asked about alleged previous false complaints, it is important that the defence seek a ruling from the trial judge that section 41 does not apply.

In such a case, the defence must have a proper evidential basis for asserting that the previous statement was both made and was untrue. Whether there is a proper evidential basis is a fact sensitive exercise and a matter of judgment rather than discretion. It is not necessary for the defence to prove that the complaint was false. According to Murray [2009] EWCA Crim 618 a proper evidential basis was said to be "less than a strong factual foundation for concluding that the previous complaint was false but it does require some material from which it could properly be concluded that the complaint was false". In other words, the defence must be able to point to material that is capable of supporting the inference of falsity but need not inevitably support it. Another case of assistance on this point is R v E [2009] EWCA Crim 2668.

In the case of R v All-Hilly [2014] 2 Cr App R 33 the Court of Appeal ruled that the fact the complainant had made but did not pursue previous allegations did not provide a sound basis for suggesting they were false.

In most cases where the defence want to ask a complainant about an alleged false allegation, in addition to seeking a ruling that section 41 does not apply, the defence will almost certainly be required to make a 'bad character' application under Section 100 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Useful link: Refer to Chapter 4 on tackling myths and stereotypes.

The role of the reviewing prosecutor

Checking the witness statement/ABE interview and considering edits

Prosecutors play an important role in ensuring that material relating to a complainant's previous sexual history which is not relevant to the issues in the case is not admitted during the course of a trial. Prosecutors should adopt a structured approach, in which true relevance to an issue in the case is properly and carefully analysed.

Checking the defendant interview and considering edits

When preparing a case prosecutors should always give consideration to the contents of the witness's statement or ABE interview. Very often, these statements include information about sexual history. Prosecutors should consider whether this is evidence that the prosecution would want to adduce (the restriction does not apply to evidence adduced by the prosecution) or whether this evidence should be edited. If a decision is made not to adduce this evidence then it should be edited from the statements and the DVDs and the defence should be advised in writing or at the pre-trial plea hearing. If they object, then they can be advised that they will need to make an application under section 41.

Steps to follow when a Section 41 application is received

The same consideration applies to comments made by a defendant in their police interview under caution. These interviews sometimes contain comments by defendants which seek to introduce material which would be in contravention of the section 41 restriction. Prosecutors consider the need to edit these interviews and keep the defence informed of intentions.

Carefully review the application and reach a preliminary position with regards to how the Crown will respond and record that position on CMS;

Immediately request written advice from counsel on the application;

Where an application is made in advance of the trial date, discuss the application and proposed response with counsel at a case conference;

Approve the response to the Section 41 application prior to service and record action taken on CMS.

Steps to follow when a Section 41 application is agreed by the court

Ensure the complainant is informed of the court's decision as soon as is reasonably practicable;

Consider whether a special measures application or a revised special measures application needs to be made as a result of the court's decision. In accordance with Part 22.7 of the CPR 2020 the prosecution has 10 business days following the granting of a Section 41 application to apply for a new special measures direction.

When a Section 41 application is received from the defence the reviewing lawyer for the case must do the following:

The Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing (PTPH)

Where an application to adduce sexual behaviour evidence has been agreed by the court in advance of the trial date the reviewing lawyer must:

Scrutinising the basis for late applications

The role of the prosecution advocate at court

Keeping the victim informed of developments and revisiting special measures where appropriate

At the PTPH, prosecution advocates should ensure that the defence endorse the PTPH form as to whether or not they intend to make a Section 41 application. In appropriate cases, the court should be asked to set a timetable. The importance of proper notice cannot be overemphasised. Late applications often have the effect of ambushing witnesses and can prevent the prosecution from being able appropriately to deal with evidence that the defence wish to adduce.

There will be cases where there is a genuine reason for the late service of a section 41 application. It may, for example, have been prompted by a matter that has only recently come to the attention of either the prosecution or the defence. Prosecuting advocates must enquire as to the reasons for a late application and to ask the Court to scrutinise the stated reasons.

Where the court has allowed the introduction of evidence or cross-examination about the complainant's sexual behaviour the prosecutor must inform the complainant as soon as reasonably practicable (Part 22.3(1)(a) CPR 2020).

Challenging defence cross-examination on inadmissible matters at trial

Where appropriate the prosecuting advocate should apply for special measures or a revised special measures direction following a decision to allow a Section 41 application. Where special measures have been agreed by the court as a result of the ruling the advocate must inform the complainant as soon as reasonably practicable (Part 22.3(1)(b) CPR 2020.

In accordance with Part 22.3(2) the court must allow the prosecuting advocate sufficient time to comply with the requirements in Part 22.3(1) above.

Prosecuting advocates should not rely solely on the judge to intervene to stop questioning or evidence being adduced in contravention of the restrictions in section 41. It is the responsibility of the prosecuting advocate to challenge inappropriate cross examination or irrelevant evidence and advocates should be proactive when there is a breach of section 41. The court should be asked to sit in private and if the defence are seeking to establish that a gateway applies, then a proper application can be made to the court.

In some cases, consideration may have to be given, where irrelevant and prejudicial evidence has been adduced without leave, to asking the court to discharge the jury. This is a drastic step and the needs of the complainant will have to be balanced against the need to secure a fair trial for both the prosecution and the defence. This illustrates the importance of understanding the section 41 provisions and ensuring that they are complied with

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Rape and Sexual Offences - Chapter 11: The Sexual History of Complainants, Section 41 YJCEA 1999 | The Crown Prosecution Service

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Section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 provides protection to complainants in proceedings involving sexual offences by restricting evidence or questions about their previous sexual history by or on behalf of the accused, subject to exceptions and with the leave of the court.…

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Introduction

Rape is a serious crime that affects millions of people around the globe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime, with 7% of those women having experienced rape or attempted rape. These statistics are deeply concerning considering that the United Nations (UN) estimates that more than 72 countries still do not have laws specifically addressing the issue of rape.

This lack of legal protection combined with a significant lack of access to resources and support for survivors has resulted in an alarming number of unreported incidents; for example, a study by UN Women found that as few as 10% of rapes are actually reported to authorities worldwide, which shows in the data on rape statistics, with countries with the highest rape statistics being the countries that have the best systems in place for victims of rape or sexual assault to come forth, and countries with the lowest or nonexistent rape rates being countries where rape is a cultural taboo and no system is in place to witness and/or charge assault. In addition, underreporting is particularly common among marginalized communities such as LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, certain religious minorities, and rural populations. As a result, these communities often face additional barriers when it comes not only to reporting cases but also to receiving proper medical care or mental health services after experiencing sexual violence.

Rape Statistics by Country

Rape Statistics Worldwide

Rape statistics across continents vary significantly, due to differences in socio-cultural norms, perceptions of gender roles and legal frameworks. In Europe, for example, the rate of reported rape is relatively low compared to other parts of the world; however, many cases go unreported. Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest rates of rape in the world due to a number of factors including conflict and poverty, although the data doesn't show it, because many of these incidents go unreported. The prevalence of gender-based violence is particularly high in conflict-affected countries such as South Sudan or Democratic Republic of Congo. For example, in South Kivu province in DRC, over one million women and girls have experienced sexual violence since 1998 alone.

In the Asia Pacific region rates vary from country to country but overall remain high due to a lack of education about sexual and reproductive health rights, economic disparities as well as weak legal protections for victims. This is compounded by harmful traditional practices such as honor killings which are still practiced in some countries such as Pakistan or India. And yet, the official rape statistics are very low, since most of these incidents are never reported. In Latin America rape is most prevalent among Indigenous women who often face discrimination and exclusion from access to justice and healthcare services related to sexual assault. Rates also tend to be higher than average in countries where organized crime groups are active. Finally, trends show that North America has seen an increase in reports of rape over recent years due to increased awareness around gender issues and improved access to services for survivors.

In general, the higher the rape statistics of a country, the higher the probability that the system in place to record rape incidents is efficient, the lower the rape rate, the higher the chance that rape incidents are not being reported.

Highest Rape Statistics in the World

The ten countries with the highest recorded rape statistics in the world are Botswana, Lesotho, Grenada, Sweden, Eswatini, South Africa, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Panama, Iceland and Suriname. Botswana is reported to have the highest rate of rapes per 100,000 people, with 96.87 cases being reported. This is followed closely by Lesotho with 89.29 incidents of rape, and Grenada with 88.87 cases of rape recorded per 100,000 people respectively. Sweden sits in fourth place at 87.97 cases of rape reported, and Eswatini rounds up the top five countries with the most rapes, with 82.73 rapes reported per 100,000 people. South Africa is the sixth country with highest rape rate, with 70.22 instances of rape being recorded every year, while St Kitts & Nevis records 56.4 rapes per 100K people annually, putting it in in seventh position. As number eight on this list lies Panama with 53.98 rapes per 100K inhabitants, while Iceland ranks ninth, with its 46.3 cases of rape reported annually. Finally, the tenth country with the highest rape statistics is Suriname, at a rate of 43.3 rapes per 100,000 people.

Countries with Highest Rape Rates

1. Botswana - 96.87
2. Lesotho - 89.29
3. Grenada - 88.87
4. Sweden - 87.97
5. Eswatini - 82.73
6. South Africa - 70.22
7. Saint Kitts and Nevis - 56.4
8. Panama - 53.98
9. Iceland - 46.3
10. Suriname - 43.3

Country with Highest Rape Rate

Botswana is the country with the highest rape rate in the world, with 96.87 cases of rape being reported per 100,000 people. The rate of sexual assaults in Botswana is so high that it is more than double the global average of 35 cases reported per 100,000 people. This alarming figure has been attributed to a plethora of factors such as the prevalence of alcohol abuse, gender-based violence, and a lack of adequate sexual education within the country. The government has taken strides to address this issue by implementing laws against gender-based violence, reforming outdated attitudes towards sexual assault and introducing comprehensive sex education in schools. However, reports suggest that there remains much work to be done in order to reduce the still alarmingly high rates of rape in Botswana and bring it closer to international standards.

Lowest Rape Statistics in the World

The ten countries with the lowest rates of reported rape per 100,000 people are Oman, Bermuda, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Syria, Mozambique, Palestine, Tajikistan and Nigeria. Countries like Oman and Bermuda have no reported rapes per 100,000 people in their population. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have similarly low statistics at 0.09 and 0.12 respective reported cases of rape per 100,000 inhabitants. Azerbaijan has a slightly higher rate at 0.15 reported rapes per 100,000 people while Syria reports slightly more at 0.17 rapes per 100K. Both Mozambique and Palestine had 0.19 and 0.25 rapes per 100K respectively, whereas Tajikistan at a rate of 0.36, and Nigeria, at 0.47, round out the list of the top ten countries with the lowest rape statistics in the world today. It is important to keep in mind that these statistics are made based on the number of reported cases of rape incidents, meaning that the fact that these countries have such low rates does not mean that rape incidents rarely happen in those countries, but rather that such incidents are not being reported.

Countries with Lowest Rape Rate

1. Oman - 0
2. Bermuda - 0
3. Saudi Arabia - 0.09
4. Egypt - 0.12
5. Azerbaijan - 0.15
6. Syria - 0.17
7. Mozambique - 0.19
8. Palestine - 0.25
9. Tajikistan - 0.36
10. Nigeria - 0.47

Country with Lowest Rape Rate

The two countries with the lowest rape rates are Oman and Bermuda. While the absence of reported rape incidents in Bermuda and Oman could at first glance seem as an impressive feat, the reasons behind it may actually be concerning. Rape is an incredibly underreported crime, meaning that many victims do not come forward to report due to fear of stigma or retribution. In these two countries, cultural norms strongly discourage survivors from speaking out about their experiences. Furthermore, there are often limited resources for victims- such as access to mental health care and legal support. Additionally, gender inequality can play a role in victims' reluctance to come forward; women's rights may be seen as less valuable or important than men's rights which could prevent victims from seeking help and justice. Finally, traditional views on marriage and sex can make it difficult for some rape survivors to report due to feelings of shame or being viewed negatively by their communities.

Rape Rate by Country

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Rape Statistics by Country 2023 - Wisevoter

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Rape is a serious crime that affects millions of people around the globe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime, with 7% of those women having experienced rape or attempted rape. These statistics are deeply concerning considering that the United Nations (UN) estimates [...]

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Introduction

Rape is a serious crime that affects millions of people around the globe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime, with 7% of those women having experienced rape or attempted rape. These statistics are deeply concerning considering that the United Nations (UN) estimates that more than 72 countries still do not have laws specifically addressing the issue of rape.

This lack of legal protection combined with a significant lack of access to resources and support for survivors has resulted in an alarming number of unreported incidents; for example, a study by UN Women found that as few as 10% of rapes are actually reported to authorities worldwide, which shows in the data on rape statistics, with countries with the highest rape statistics being the countries that have the best systems in place for victims of rape or sexual assault to come forth, and countries with the lowest or nonexistent rape rates being countries where rape is a cultural taboo and no system is in place to witness and/or charge assault. In addition, underreporting is particularly common among marginalized communities such as LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, certain religious minorities, and rural populations. As a result, these communities often face additional barriers when it comes not only to reporting cases but also to receiving proper medical care or mental health services after experiencing sexual violence.

Rape Statistics by Country

Rape Statistics Worldwide

Rape statistics across continents vary significantly, due to differences in socio-cultural norms, perceptions of gender roles and legal frameworks. In Europe, for example, the rate of reported rape is relatively low compared to other parts of the world; however, many cases go unreported. Sub-Saharan Africa has some of the highest rates of rape in the world due to a number of factors including conflict and poverty, although the data doesn't show it, because many of these incidents go unreported. The prevalence of gender-based violence is particularly high in conflict-affected countries such as South Sudan or Democratic Republic of Congo. For example, in South Kivu province in DRC, over one million women and girls have experienced sexual violence since 1998 alone.

In the Asia Pacific region rates vary from country to country but overall remain high due to a lack of education about sexual and reproductive health rights, economic disparities as well as weak legal protections for victims. This is compounded by harmful traditional practices such as honor killings which are still practiced in some countries such as Pakistan or India. And yet, the official rape statistics are very low, since most of these incidents are never reported. In Latin America rape is most prevalent among Indigenous women who often face discrimination and exclusion from access to justice and healthcare services related to sexual assault. Rates also tend to be higher than average in countries where organized crime groups are active. Finally, trends show that North America has seen an increase in reports of rape over recent years due to increased awareness around gender issues and improved access to services for survivors.

In general, the higher the rape statistics of a country, the higher the probability that the system in place to record rape incidents is efficient, the lower the rape rate, the higher the chance that rape incidents are not being reported.

Highest Rape Statistics in the World

The ten countries with the highest recorded rape statistics in the world are Botswana, Lesotho, Grenada, Sweden, Eswatini, South Africa, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Panama, Iceland and Suriname. Botswana is reported to have the highest rate of rapes per 100,000 people, with 96.87 cases being reported. This is followed closely by Lesotho with 89.29 incidents of rape, and Grenada with 88.87 cases of rape recorded per 100,000 people respectively. Sweden sits in fourth place at 87.97 cases of rape reported, and Eswatini rounds up the top five countries with the most rapes, with 82.73 rapes reported per 100,000 people. South Africa is the sixth country with highest rape rate, with 70.22 instances of rape being recorded every year, while St Kitts & Nevis records 56.4 rapes per 100K people annually, putting it in in seventh position. As number eight on this list lies Panama with 53.98 rapes per 100K inhabitants, while Iceland ranks ninth, with its 46.3 cases of rape reported annually. Finally, the tenth country with the highest rape statistics is Suriname, at a rate of 43.3 rapes per 100,000 people.

Countries with Highest Rape Rates

1. Botswana - 96.87
2. Lesotho - 89.29
3. Grenada - 88.87
4. Sweden - 87.97
5. Eswatini - 82.73
6. South Africa - 70.22
7. Saint Kitts and Nevis - 56.4
8. Panama - 53.98
9. Iceland - 46.3
10. Suriname - 43.3

Country with Highest Rape Rate

Botswana is the country with the highest rape rate in the world, with 96.87 cases of rape being reported per 100,000 people. The rate of sexual assaults in Botswana is so high that it is more than double the global average of 35 cases reported per 100,000 people. This alarming figure has been attributed to a plethora of factors such as the prevalence of alcohol abuse, gender-based violence, and a lack of adequate sexual education within the country. The government has taken strides to address this issue by implementing laws against gender-based violence, reforming outdated attitudes towards sexual assault and introducing comprehensive sex education in schools. However, reports suggest that there remains much work to be done in order to reduce the still alarmingly high rates of rape in Botswana and bring it closer to international standards.

Lowest Rape Statistics in the World

The ten countries with the lowest rates of reported rape per 100,000 people are Oman, Bermuda, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Syria, Mozambique, Palestine, Tajikistan and Nigeria. Countries like Oman and Bermuda have no reported rapes per 100,000 people in their population. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have similarly low statistics at 0.09 and 0.12 respective reported cases of rape per 100,000 inhabitants. Azerbaijan has a slightly higher rate at 0.15 reported rapes per 100,000 people while Syria reports slightly more at 0.17 rapes per 100K. Both Mozambique and Palestine had 0.19 and 0.25 rapes per 100K respectively, whereas Tajikistan at a rate of 0.36, and Nigeria, at 0.47, round out the list of the top ten countries with the lowest rape statistics in the world today. It is important to keep in mind that these statistics are made based on the number of reported cases of rape incidents, meaning that the fact that these countries have such low rates does not mean that rape incidents rarely happen in those countries, but rather that such incidents are not being reported.

Countries with Lowest Rape Rate

1. Oman - 0
2. Bermuda - 0
3. Saudi Arabia - 0.09
4. Egypt - 0.12
5. Azerbaijan - 0.15
6. Syria - 0.17
7. Mozambique - 0.19
8. Palestine - 0.25
9. Tajikistan - 0.36
10. Nigeria - 0.47

Country with Lowest Rape Rate

The two countries with the lowest rape rates are Oman and Bermuda. While the absence of reported rape incidents in Bermuda and Oman could at first glance seem as an impressive feat, the reasons behind it may actually be concerning. Rape is an incredibly underreported crime, meaning that many victims do not come forward to report due to fear of stigma or retribution. In these two countries, cultural norms strongly discourage survivors from speaking out about their experiences. Furthermore, there are often limited resources for victims- such as access to mental health care and legal support. Additionally, gender inequality can play a role in victims' reluctance to come forward; women's rights may be seen as less valuable or important than men's rights which could prevent victims from seeking help and justice. Finally, traditional views on marriage and sex can make it difficult for some rape survivors to report due to feelings of shame or being viewed negatively by their communities.

Rape Rate by Country

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Rape Statistics by Country 2023 - Wisevoter

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Rape is a serious crime that affects millions of people around the globe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime, with 7% of those women having experienced rape or attempted rape. These statistics are deeply concerning considering that the United Nations (UN) estimates [...]

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"1 in 5" is one of the most high-profile and contested statistics in the media today. Referring to the number of women who experience sexual assault during their time in college, "1 in 5" is frequently invoked by activists to intensify public efforts to identify, prevent, and prosecute sexual assault. At the same time, it is roundly critiqued by those who feel it is an inflated, politically motivated number that creates mass hysteria rather than sound policy. A closer look at the origins of "1 in 5" can help us understand these polarized views and, more importantly, appreciate what is at stake in publicly acknowledging sexual assault and rape so that we can better support survivors.

While it may appear to be a 21st century meme, "1 in 5" actually has a 30-year history. Its origins lie in the work of feminist social scientists who were inspired by the 1970s anti-rape movement to try and accurately measure the prevalence of rape and sexual assault. I say "accurately" because there was wide acknowledgment (then, as now) that attempts to do so had been hampered by poorly designed surveys and pervasive underreporting. One of these scientists was .

In 1976, Koss, then a newly minted assistant psychology professor at Kent State University, became intrigued by the difficulty of gathering accurate statistics about rape and sexual assault. As she later recalled, "I had recently read journalist Susan Brownmiller's book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. Using what few data were available at the time, she carefully documented that the scope of rape was underestimated. The challenge of finding these unmeasured rapes pulled me in...."

To rise to this challenge, Koss used her expertise in survey design and measurement to develop a questionnaire, the Sexual Experiences Survey, that would be worded to pick up a wide range of sexual victimization experiences, including rape. In its first version, the survey included thirteen questions. Twelve of those asked about behavior but did not use the word "rape." For example, one question, which constituted the legal definition of rape, was, "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a man when you didn't want to because he used some degree of physical force?" The 13th question was, "Have you ever been raped?"

The history of "1 in 5" challenges us to critically examine, in the present moment, who has the power to name rape and be believed, under what conditions, and with what consequences.

Koss administered this initial survey to over 3,800 students at Kent State. As expected, she found that rape was prevalent on campus. What was more startling, and what became-and has remained-controversial in ensuing debates, was that over half of her female respondents who endorsed the legal definition of rape did not simultaneously endorse the item in which their experiences were called "rape." Importantly, participants were more likely to respond with this disconnect if the rape was perpetrated by an acquaintance as opposed to a stranger.

The last item on the survey, "Have you ever been raped?" had originally been intended only as a validity check. But its inclusion actually exposed the wide gap between experiencing certain acts and publicly naming them "rape," especially if the experience was with someone known to the respondent. This finding was crucial in making date and acquaintance rape visible and helped explain why previous efforts to measure sexual assault suffered from underreporting.

Based on these results, Koss identified what she called the "hidden rape victim"-a woman who endorses experiencing the behavioral and legal definition of rape but who does not call it rape. Koss then refined her survey to include only the behavioral items (in other words, no questions that labeled experiences as "rape" or "assault") and added a more nuanced 4-item "perception of victimization" scale. On this scale, respondents chose the statement that most closely matched their experience. These statements were: "I don't feel I was victimized"; "I believe I was a victim of serious miscommunication"; "I believe I was a victim of a crime other than rape"; and, "I believe I was a victim of rape."

Koss administered the revised survey to over 6,000 university students across 32 institutions in the United States. The result? Twenty-seven percent of women reported having experienced attempted or completed rape as the law defined it since the age of 14, the vast majority perpetrated by a date or acquaintance (the more commonly reported "1 in 5" refers only to sexual assault during time in college). Only 55 percent of respondents who reported a completed rape perpetrated by a stranger also endorsed the item "I believe I was a victim of rape." And if the completed rape was perpetrated by an acquaintance, this went down to only 23 percent.

Instead of asking why women were so reluctant to report a rape, critics seized upon this finding to try to undermine the reality of date/acquaintance rape, the credibility of its victims, and the validity of the survey results. Koss's finding that the majority of women felt victimized by their experience even if they stopped short of calling it rape went largely unnoticed. If women weren't calling it rape, critics argued, why should anyone else?

In 1988, journalist Robin Warshaw wrote a book inspired by the survey results entitled I Never Called It Rape, which focused on raising awareness about the nature and prevalence of date and acquaintance rape, for which Koss wrote a prologue. Koss' work garnered immediate and widespread attention. She soon found herself the target of attacks by conservative media and other academics.

At their most damning, critics charged Koss with literally conjuring up an experience that simply did not exist. One of these critics, self-dubbed "factual feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers, continues to argue that the "1 in 5" statistic is inflated and leads to exaggerated claims of rape victimization and thus ineffective policies (she has also named it one of five "feminist myths that will not die," alongside the gender pay gap and stats about the sexual trafficking of girls). Despite this, Koss presented testimony at the hearings leading to the first Violence Against Women Act, in 1994, and continues to research what factors affect sexual assault and rape acknowledgement.

Half of their survey respondents who had experienced rape according to this legal definition did not acknowledge experiencing either sexual assault or rape.

So what can the origins of the "1 in 5" statistic tell us about how to move forward with sexual assault policy? The number itself has been remarkably stable. Survey after survey reveals that when female college students are asked if they have experienced oral, anal, or vaginal penetration in situations involving physical force, threat of force, coercion, or incapacitation, about 20 percent of respondents say "yes," and about half of the victims of even the most violent crimes still don't call it "rape." In fact, in a recent study, Koss and her colleagues found that half of their survey respondents who had experienced rape according to this legal definition did not acknowledge experiencing either sexual assault or rape. This, more than any other finding, should be the one that gives us pause-but not for the reasons Hoff Sommers and others propose.

This finding suggests at least three things that can inform effective policy. First, most women are well aware-and research has amply documented-that publicly acknowledging sexual assault and rape will activate a cascade of aversive and, for some women, even life-threatening events. Despite legal reforms, increased public awareness, and the power of #MeToo to enhance survivor credibility, more policy work needs to be done to make it safe, worthwhile, and nonstigmatizing for women to publicly acknowledge their experiences.

Second, policy needs to reflect the finding that regardless of how a woman labels her experience, she will face negative emotional consequences and should have access to support. Research findings are mixed regarding the long-term mental health outcomes of labeling versus not labeling, but one thing is certain: regardless of whether she labels the rape as a rape, it is still experienced as problematic and distressing, and can have long-term repercussions.

Not acknowledging rape when it happens is not a sign that it didn't happen or was unproblematic. It is a sign that we do not have adequate language for communicating the complexity of sexual violence and its aftermath.

Third-and here is where it gets complicated-we need to create forums where all kinds of women from all sectors of society can talk about sexual victimization in all of its complexity and be taken seriously as narrators of their own experiences, whatever terms they choose to use. Women who have survived a rape according to its legal definition, whether they call it a rape or not, suffer lasting effects. Not acknowledging rape when it happens is not a sign that it didn't happen or was unproblematic. It is a sign that we do not have adequate language for communicating the complexity of sexual violence and its aftermath. It is a sign that women are still denied full agency in the construction of their sexual subjectivities. As feminist philosopher, activist, and survivor Linda Alcoff recently wrote in her book Rape and Resistance, "The point is for victims not simply to have the capacity to express our experiences and what we 'are,' as if this is fixed, but also to have a hand in making what we are, what we wish to be, and for this we need a voice both individually and collectively."

It is now over 30 years since Koss first published her work on hidden rape victims. Instead of rehashing whether "1 in 5" is valid and whether women are reliable interpreters of their own experiences, we should be asking why it is so hard for us to hear these experiences and connect them to larger structures of power and domination. The history of "1 in 5" challenges us to critically examine, in the present moment, who has the power to name rape and be believed, under what conditions, and with what consequences.

As the #MeToo movement unfolds and we grapple with how to extend its reach to racialized, gender minority, immigrant, low socioeconomic status, and precariously employed women-all those who have historically been denied the power to name their own experiences or face violent consequences if they do-we should brainstorm policies that will make it possible and safe for more women to speak meaningfully and contextually about all forms of sexual victimization. Only then can we begin both to help individuals and to dismantle the systems that silence them.

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What the Origins of the "1 in 5" Statistic Teaches Us About Sexual Assault Policy - Behavioral Scientist

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"1 in 5" is one of the most high-profile and contested statistics in the media today. Referring to the number of women who experience sexual assault during their time in college, "1 in 5" is frequently invoked by activists to intensify public efforts to identify, prevent, and prosecute sexual assault.

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Nearly as long as people have been recording history, they have documented sexual assaults. From the writings of ancient Greece to the Bible to the letters of early explorers, sexual violence has long been a brutal part of the human story. Some assaults have even changed the course of history. And, like all history, what we know about sexual assaults of the past is generally what was told by the victors-mostly men.

"Women are erased," says Sharon Block, professor of history at University of California, Irvine and the author of Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America. "The historic rapes that 'mattered' are the only ones where men saw themselves damaged."

Wars, especially, have been linked to egregious sexual assaults, from mass rape committed by Soviet soldiers as they advanced into Germany during World War II to sexual violence amid the genocides in Rwanda in 1995. In fact, the ubiquity of sexual assault in wars makes those crimes a category unto themselves.

With the understanding that no list could ever be comprehensive, below are sexual assaults that have both influenced history and those that, notably, did not.
1. The rise of Alexander the Great
An act of sexual violence may have contributed to the rise of Alexander the Great, according to Greek historians Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch. Their accounts were written hundreds of years after the event was supposed to have taken place, but the story goes like this: In 336 B.C., Pausanias of Orestis, a member of the bodyguard of King Philip II of Macedonia (and possibly his lover), was invited to a banquet by Philip's father-in-law, Attalus. There, he was raped by Attalus's servants. When Philip refused to punish the attackers (he did give Pausanias a promotion), Pausanias murdered the king, paving the way for the ascension of Philip's son, Alexander the Great.
2. The rape of the Sabine women
The Roman historian Livy, writing during the first century, traces Rome's origins to the mid-8th century B.C., when the warrior tribe was facing a shortage of women. "Population growth was the most difficult thing to achieve in antiquity," says Thomas Martin, author of Ancient Rome: From Romulus to Justinian. According to Livy, the Roman leader, Romulus, held a religious festival and invited the neighboring Sabine tribe, ("Free food and drink," notes Martin.) At Romulus's signal, the Romans attacked and killed the Sabine men at the festival and carried off the women. In the resulting bloody war, the Sabine women called a halt to the hostilities, making allies of the tribes and allowing the Romans to multiply. As with the rape of Lucretia, and then Virginia, both recounted by Livy, there is disagreement among historians as to the veracity of this story. "It's a myth," contends Mary Beard, historian and author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.
3. Boudicca's fight for independence
Celtic tribes were a constant thorn in the Roman Empire's side from the moment they invaded the Island of Britain in 45 A.D. The Iceni, a Celtic tribe in East Anglia, were led by a king named Prasutagus, who was married to Boudicca. When Prasutagus died, Rome claimed his kingdom, over the objections of Boudicca, who was flogged publicly and forced to watch her daughters raped by Roman soldiers. Boudicca then assembled a powerful army and rebelled against the Romans, eventually sacking London (then called Londinium). The Roman historian Cassius Dio describes how Boudicca's own soldiers then violently assaulted Roman women there: "Their breasts were cut off and stuffed in their mouths, so that they seemed to be eating them, then their bodies were skewered lengthwise on sharp stakes." Boudicca's rebellion was eventually crushed by the Roman general, Gaius Suetonius in 60 or 61 A.D.
4. Columbus and slavery
When Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus voyaged to the Caribbean in the 1490s, he not only discovered new lands, at least one of his men would document his own rape and torture of an Indigenous woman. Michele de Cuneo, a noble friend of Columbus, tells of a "Carib woman" given to him by the admiral. When she fought back against his attempted sexual attacks, he "took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly...finally we came to an agreement in such manner that I can tell you she seemed to have been brought up in a school for harlots." Columbus' ships would eventually sail back to Europe, carrying more than 1,000 enslaved people.
5. A baron's quick acquittal
Baron Frederick Calvert may have been an early study in affluenza. Left a large amount of money-and the proprietary governorship of Maryland-at age 20, the English playboy was kicked out of Turkey for keeping a harem, and was rumored to have murdered his first wife. In 1768, he was charged with the kidnapping and rape of Sarah Woodcock, a milliner. The jury took all of an hour to acquit him (they decided she hadn't tried hard enough to escape), but he was cast out from British society and his title died with him in 1771.
6. 'Mutiny on the Bounty' and Pitcairn's dark legacy
In April of 1779, Fletcher Christian and 18 of his loyal seamen seized a ship from Captain William Bligh in an incident made famous in the novel and movie, Mutiny on the Bounty. Christian and his sailors settled on the tiny Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific, as well as on Tahiti, where their descendants still live. In 1999, a rape accusation from a 15-year-old girl was brought against an older man on the island. The trial revealed a culture of sexual abuse of children that had carried on for generations. In 2004, seven men, who comprised one-third of the island's male population, went on trial for sexual offenses. The trials were complicated by many factors, including the island's remoteness and lack of a legal system. In the end, six of the seven accused were found guilty and three were jailed, although none received significant sentences.
7. 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself.'
It is impossible to estimate the number of enslaved women of color assaulted and/or raped by slave owners in the colonies and the United States before the end of the Civil War. What is clear is that such instances were common and wouldn't have been considered "assault." As early as 1662, Virginia's governing body, the House of Burgesses, instituted rules addressing children born of enslaved women wherein the father might be a white (free) man: "If mother (whatever her racial background, whether Indian, Black, or mixed) is a slave, child is a slave-no matter who the father might be," says Peter Wallenstein, author of Cradle of America: A History of Virginia. Surviving stories of such assaults only came from escaped or formerly enslaved people, who managed to record them. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself by Harriet Jacobs is an example. The father of two of her enslaved children, Samuel Treadwell Sawyer, was elected to Congress.
8. The Pogrom of Kishinev
The murder of 49 Jews in the town of Kishinev in the Russian Empire in 1903 also included the rape of scores of Jewish women. In his book, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, Stephen J. Zipperstein, a professor of history at Stanford, notes that images, as well as tales and poems of the transgressions in Kishinev circled the globe, including America. Outcry over the Kishinev reports motivated Russian Jews to join revolutionary activity against the Czarist regime and influenced the migration of thousands of Eastern European Jews towards the West and Palestine. At the same time, the pogrom lay the framework for the horrors that European Jews would face 40 years later during the Holocaust.
9. The rape of Recy Taylor
Recy Taylor was 24 when, in 1944, she was kidnapped by six men while walking home from church in Abbeville, Alabama, and gang-raped in the back of a truck. Even though one of the perpetrators had confessed, two white juries refused to indict the accused. Taylor's rape and the reaction, emblematic of the repressive Jim Crow south, helped galvanize the civil rights movement. When the details of her story were reported in the Black press, the NAACP sent Rosa Parks to Abbeville to investigate the matter. Parks established the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, the leaders of which went on to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. In 2011, the Alabama State Legislature officially apologized to Taylor for its lack of prosecution.
READ MORE: Before the Bus, Rosa Parks Was a Sexual Assault Investigator

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How Sexual Assault Has Been Portrayed-or Erased-Throughout History

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Nearly as long as people have been recording history, they have documented sexual assaults. From the writings of ancient Greece to the Bible to the letters of early explorers, sexual violence has long been a brutal part of the human story. Some assaults have even changed the course of history.

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1972 is enacted by Congress and signed into law by Richard Nixon. The first use of Title IX in charges of sexual harassment against an educational institution in Alexander v. Yale University. Then in 1980 U.S. Department of Education was established. Primary oversight of Title IX was transferred to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education. Shortly after in 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Grove City v. Bell that Title IX applies only to the specific programs within an institution that receive specifically targeted federal funding. U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 then ruled unanimously in Franklin v. Gwinnett County Schools that plaintiffs who sue under Title IX may be awarded monetary damages for intentional discrimination. In 1996 in the case Doe v. Petaluma, ERA established the right of students to be free of peer sexual harassment under Title IX, including the obligation of school districts to provide training to prevent sexual harassment and to establish procedures for addressing harassment when it occurs. In 1998, U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, that a student may sue a school district for damages for a teacher's sexual harassment only if a school official with authority to institute corrective measures had actual notice of the teacher's misconduct and if school acted with "deliberate indifference" to the harassment. In 2001, U.S. Department of Justice issued "Title IX Legal Manual" providing guidance to federal agencies regarding the variety of educational programs under Title IX. Then in 2011, The Department of Education issued a policy guidance that Title IX's protections against sexual harassment and sexual violence apply to all students.

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Research Guides: Student Project: Title IX, Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault: Primary Sources

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1972 is enacted by Congress and signed into law by Richard Nixon. The first use of Title IX in charges of sexual harassment against an educational institution in Alexander v. Yale University. Then in 1980 U.S. Department of Education was established. Primary oversight of Title IX was transferred to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S.

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Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in North Carolina. After escaping to New York, Jacobs eventually wrote a narrative of her enslavement under the pseudonym of Linda Brent. In this excerpt Jacobs explains her experience struggling with sexual assault from her master.
The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences.

My grandmother could not avoid seeing things which excited her suspicions. She was uneasy about me, and tried various ways to buy me; but the never-changing answer was always repeated: "Linda does not belong to me. She is my daughter's property, and I have no legal right to sell her." The conscientious man! He was too scrupulous to sell me; but he had no scruples whatever about committing a much greater wrong against the helpless young girl placed under his guardianship, as his daughter's property. Sometimes my persecutor would ask me whether I would like to be sold. I told him I would rather be sold to any body than to lead such a life as I did. On such occasions he would assume the air of a very injured individual, and reproach me for my ingratitude. "Did I not take you into the house, and make you the companion of my own children?" he would say. "Have I ever treated you like a negro? I have never allowed you to be punished, not even to please your mistress. And this is the recompense I get, you ungrateful girl!" I answered that he had reasons of his own for screening me from punishment, and that the course he pursued made my mistress hate me and persecute me. If I wept, he would say, "Poor child! Don't cry! don't cry! I will make peace for you with your mistress. Only let me arrange matters in my own way. Poor, foolish girl! you don't know what is for your own good. I would cherish you. I would make a lady of you. Now go, and think of all I have promised you."

I did think of it.

Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling you the plain truth. Yet when victims make their escape from this wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." Nay, more, they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this by passing them into the slave-trader's hands as soon as possible, and thus getting them out of their sight. I am glad to say there are some honorable exceptions.

I have myself known two southern wives who exhorted their husbands to free those slaves towards whom they stood in a "parental relation;" and their request was granted. These husbands blushed before the superior nobleness of their wives' natures. Though they had only counseled them to do that which it was their duty to do, it commanded their respect, and rendered their conduct more exemplary. Concealment was at an end, and confidence took the place of distrust.

Though this bad institution deadens the moral sense, even in white women, to a fearful extent, it is not altogether extinct. I have heard southern ladies say of Mr. Such a one, "He not only thinks it no disgrace to be the father of those little niggers, but he is not ashamed to call himself their master. I declare, such things ought not to be tolerated in any decent society!"

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston: 1861), 55-57.
Available through Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in North Carolina. After escaping to New York, Jacobs eventually wrote a narrative of her enslavement under the pseudonym of Linda Brent. In this excerpt Jacobs explains her experience struggling with sexual assault from her master. The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.

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A Natural History of Rape Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion By RANDY THORNHILL and CRAIG T. PALMER…

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A Brief History of Rape Law

The fist rape law emerged in Babylon during c.1900 BC. The Code of Hammurabi dictated that if a man forces sex upon another man's wife or if a man forces sex upon a virgin woman that "is living in her father's house," then "that man should be put to death" (Gold).This set a legal precedent that rape was merely a form of theft and vandalism, since women were considered property. Hence, the idea of a husband "forcing sexual intercourse" upon his wife was deemed the man's legal right. Ancient society viewed rape as morally depraved, not because it caused the woman harm, but because it harmed male honor. Society viewed raped women as damaged goods and no longer marriageable assets. Speaking toward this idea that rape was merely an issue of one man damaging another man's property, Winnie Tomm concludes that "by contrast, rape of a single woman without strong ties to a father or husband caused no great concern" (Tomm). This view remained constant for centuries until English law in the 1600's created the first shift in society's perception of rape by re-defining the criminal act as "the carnal knowledge of any woman above the age of 10 years against her will" (Gold).

These two laws were combined in the United States. Common law in the US declared that "a person commits rape when he has carnal knowledge of a female, not his wife, forcibly and against her will" (Gold). The law's structure and general concept mirror English law quite closely; however, the Code of Hammurabi's shadow belied the underlying morals. The qualification injected into the center of the law, stating that rape is only considered a crime when it is committed outside the bonds of marriage, alludes to the principles in ancient Babylonian law that define women as male property. United States' past common law can be broken down as follows: "Carnal knowledge" was further defined in US law in 1954 via Copeland v. State trial, which declared that "it shall not be necessary to prove the actual omission of seed, but the crime shall be deemed complete under proof of penetration only" ( Copeland v. State). "Forced and against her will" indicates that the incident is not considered rape unless it meets both of these qualities beyond a reasonable doubt. It must be thoroughly proved that the woman was violently forced (the court often demanded to see physical injury to satisfy this aspect) and that the woman in no way desired sexual intercourse at the time (Kilpatrick).

Because "non-consent" was an integral element of the crime and because the US law

states that a criminal is innocent until proven guilty, the burden fell upon the woman to prove that she offered no indication of consent. Society pre-judged women in rape trials as guilty of promiscuous behavior, so to provide irrefutable proof of victimization was a Herculean feat. At the time, when a woman was raped, she would enter the legal system addressed as a defendant and witness. She was not declared a victim unless at the close of the trial the man was found undeniably guilty of forcing sexual intercourse upon her without any indication whatsoever, of her desire for said intercourse (Kilpatrick).

Women were forced off the streets and forced into silence. Women knew that if they were the object of a sexual assault, the law would not protect them (Bevacqua). Then, the Second Wave feminist movement began. Women started encouraging each other to speak out and act out against the injustices they faced. Writers like Susan Griffin in 1970 began shocking people out of their complacency about rape calling it a "form of mass terrorism." Griffin wrote about how rape restricted women's lives because they lived in terror, in abject fear of going out alone: "[women] will not be free until the threat of rape and the atmosphere of violence is ended, and to end that the nature of male behavior must change" (Griffin).Anti-rape activists worked within the Second Wave feminist movement to address the issue of rape on a variety of levels: consciousness raising, support, and legal changes.

Three of the various ways in which feminists brought awareness to the rape epidemic and the need for change were through consciousness raising groups, large public events, and poetry. In the late 1960's, women began gathering in small groups and sharing their personal stories about rape incidents and other traumatizing experience. These little gatherings were called consciousness raising groups.On January 24, 1971, The New York Radical Feminist group held their first Speak-Out, a large public gathering where women could share their stories with each other. This event was so successful that The New York Radical Feminist group held a follow-up conference about rape that April (Rose). More events like this emerged throughout the nation. A series of marches began in 1976 called Take Back the Night marches. Numerous women participated in these rallies to protest sexual assault and fight for the right to walk the streets at night without fear (Hibsch). However, events like these and physical get togethers were not the only forms of consciousness raising. A third form was poetry printed in radical publications and read aloud in community poetry readings. Such poetry is the primary focus of the posts to follow.

Support of rape survivors was another important strategy. Community gatherings, as mentioned above, provided a significant degree of moral and emotional support to rape survivors, but one of the critical breakthroughs that arose from the Second Wave feminist movement was the establishment of rape crisis centers. The Bay Area Women Against Rape (BAWAR) opened the first two rape crisis centers in 1971, located in California and Washington DC (Kilpatrick). According to BAWAR's website, their founding mission was, and still is, to "establish a place where rape and incest survivors could receive quality counseling and advocacy they need" (BAWAR).

Finally, the most crucial need that anti-rape feminists devoted themselves to resolving was legal change. Spearheaded primarily by the National Rape Task Force, a subsection of the National Organization for Woman, feminist s began campaigning relentlessly to redefine rape as a crime of violence (National Organization for Women). And, in 1974, Michigan created the first successful attempt to legally redefine rape. Known as the Criminal Sexual Conduct Law, this bill not only established a broader definition of rape, but it also outlawed spousal rape (Bevacqua). Other states followed Michigan's example, and finally in 1996, Georgia, the last of the fifty states, outlawed marital rape as well (Degnan). Today, due to changes made in 2012, the FBI defines rape as "the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person without consent of the victim" (Savage).

Even with the incredible changes, catalyzed by activists in the Second Wave feminist movement, the war against rape has still yet to be won.

Sources:

"About." The Bay Area Women Against Rape , BAWAR, https://www.bawar.org/about/.

Bevacqua, M, Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault. Northeastern University Press, 2000.

Bierschbach, Briana. "This Woman Fought To End Minnesota's 'Marital Rape' Exception, And Won." NPR, NPR, 4 May 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/05/04/719635969/thiswoman-fought-to-end-minnesotas-marital-rape-exception-and-won.

"Copeland v. State." Justia Law, https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/1954/76-so2d-137.html.

Effgen, Christopher. United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2018, http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm.

"Get Statistics." National Sexual Violence Resource Center, https://www.nsvrc.org/node/4737.

Gold, Sally, and Martha Wyatt. "The Rape System: Old Roles and New Times." Catholic University Law Review, vol. 2, no. 4, 1978, pp. 695-727, http://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol27/iss4.

Griffin, Susan. "Rape Is a Form of Mass Terrorism." The American Women's Movement: a Brief History with Documents, edited by Nancy MacLean, Bedford/St. Martins, 2009, pp. 99-100.

Hibsch, Jimmy. "Students 'Take Back the Night' on Columbia Streets." Maneater,https://www.themaneater.com/stories/campus/students-take-back-night.

"Highlights." National Organization for Women, https://now.org/about/history/highlights/.

Kilpatrick, Dean G. " Rape and Sexual Assault ." National Violence Against Women Prevention

Research Center , Medical University of South Carolina https://mainwebv.musc.edu/vawprevention/research

Lockwood, Patricia. "Rape Joke." The Awl, 25 July 2013.

Maschke, Karen J. The Legal Response to Violence against Women. Garland, 1997.

"Patricia Lockwood on the 'Rape Joke.'" Facebook Watch, 28 Apr. 2017, https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154790859176939/?v=1015479089176939&external_log_id=644ca1a3ece124581c12b64a3234b9bd&q=Channel 4 News rape joke.

Peiss, Kathy Lee, et al. Passion and Power: Sexuality in History. Temple University Press, 1989.

Rose, V.M, "Rape as a social problem: a byproduct of the feminist movement," Social Problems,1977.

Sanders, Teela. The Oxford Handbook of Sex Offenses and Sex Offenders. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Savage, Charlie. "Federal Crime Statistics to Expand Rape Definition" The New York Times, 14 Apr. 2018. Patricia-lockwood-rape-joke-poem-is-world-famous.

Tomm, Winnie. Bodied Mindfulness: Women's Spirits, Bodies, and Places. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995.

Yllo, Kersti A., and M. Gabriela Torres. Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context. Oxford University Press, 2016.

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A Brief History of Rape Law The fist rape law emerged in Babylon during c.1900 BC. The Code of Hammurabi dictated that if a man forces sex upon another man's wife or if a man forces sex upon a virgin woman that "is living in her father's house," then "that man should be put to death" (Gold).This set a legal precedent that rape was merely a form of theft and vandalism, since women were considered property.

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The concept of , both as an abduction and in the sexual sense (not always distinguishable), makes its appearance in early religious texts.

From the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome into the Colonial period, rape along with arson, treason and murder was a capital offense. "Those committing rape were subject to a wide range of capital punishments that were seemingly brutal, frequently bloody, and at times spectacular." In the 12th century, kinsmen of the victim were given the option of executing the punishment themselves. "In England in the early fourteenth century, a victim of rape might be expected to gouge out the eyes and/or sever the offender's testicles herself." Despite the harshness of these laws, actual punishments were usually far less severe: in late Medieval Europe, cases concerning rapes of marriageable women, wives, widows, or members of the lower class were rarely brought forward, and usually ended with only a small monetary fine or a marriage between the victim and the rapist.

Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas argued that rape, though sinful, was less sinful than masturbation or coitus interruptus, because it fulfilled the procreative function of sex, while the other acts violated the purpose of sex.

Greek mythology

The rape of women or youths is a common theme in Greek mythology. Among the rapes or abductions committed by Zeus, the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon, are Europa, Ganymede, and Leda the Nymph.

The rape of Chrysippus by Laius was known as "the crime of Laius", a term which came to be applied to all male rape[citation needed ]. It was seen as an example of hubris in the original sense of the word, i.e., violent outrage, and its punishment was so severe that it destroyed not only Laius himself, but also his son, Oedipus, his wife Jocasta, his grandchildren (including Antigone), and members of his extended family.

Ancient Rome

In Roman law, raptus (or ) meant primarily kidnapping or abduction; sexual violation was a secondary issue. The "abduction" of an unmarried girl from her father's household in some circumstances was a matter of the couple eloping without her father's permission to marry. Rape in the English sense of "forced sex" was more often expressed as a sex crime committed through violence or coercion ( cum vi or per vim). Raptus ad stuprum, "abduction for the purpose of committing a sex crime," emerged as a legal distinction in the late Roman Republic. The Lex Julia de vi publica, recorded in the early 3rd century CE but dating probably from the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, defined rape as forced sex against "boy, woman, or anyone".

Although Roman law in the historical period recognized rape as a crime, the rape of women is a pervasive theme in the myths and legends of early Rome. The Augustan historian Livy seemed "embarrassed" by the rape motif and emphasizes the redeeming political dimension of traditional stories. The "rape" of the Sabine women was interpreted as showing that Rome was constituted as a "blended" population in which people resolved violence and coexisted by consent and treaty. The rape of the exemplary woman Lucretia by the king's son led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic. In the 50s BCE, the Epicurean poet Lucretius condemned rape as a primitive behavior outside the bounds of an advanced civilization, describing it as "a man's use of violent force and imposition of sexual impulse."

Intercourse by force or compulsion, even if it took place under circumstances that were otherwise unlawful or immoral, left the victim legally without blame. The official position under the emperor Diocletian (reigned 284-305 AD) held that:

The laws punish the foul wickedness of those who prostitute their modesty to the lusts of others, but they do not attach blame to those who are compelled to by force, since it has, moreover, been quite properly decided that their reputations are unharmed and that they are not prohibited from marriage to others.

Although the law recognized the victim's innocence, rhetoric used by the defense indicates that jurors might harbor attitudes of blame.

As a matter of law, rape could be committed only against a citizen in good standing. The rape of a slave could be prosecuted only as damage to the owner's property. People who worked as prostitutes or entertainers, even if they were technically free, suffered , the loss of legal and social standing. A person who made his or her body available for public use or pleasure had in effect surrendered the right to be protected from sexual abuse or physical violence. Men who had been raped "by the force of robbers or the enemy in wartime (vi praedonum vel hostium)" were exempt by law from infamia.

There was no statute of limitations for rape; by contrast adultery, which was criminalized under Augustus, had to be prosecuted within five years. The rape of a freeborn male or a female virgin is among the worst crimes that could be committed in Rome, along with parricide and robbing a temple. Rape was a capital crime, and the rapist was subject to execution, a rare penalty in Roman law.

The victim's consent was usually not a factor in Roman rape cases, since raptus could refer to a successful seduction as well as abduction or forced sex. What had been violated was primarily the right of the head of household (paterfamilias) to give or withhold his consent. The consequences of an abduction or an elopement were considered a private matter to be determined by the couple and their families, who might choose to recognize the marriage.

Christian Empire

Attitudes toward rape changed when the Roman Empire became Christianized. St. Augustine believed Lucretia's suicide was likely prompted by her shame at being violated and her fear over possible accusations of complicity. He also suggests that it might have been an attempt to expiate her guilt over involuntary signs of sexual pleasure which had encouraged Sextus in his abuse. Augustine's interpretation of the rape of Lucretia (in The City of God Against the Pagans 1.19) has generated a substantial body of criticism, starting with a satire by Machiavelli. Historian of early Christianity Peter Brown characterized this section of Augustine's work as his most vituperative attack on Roman ideals of virtue. Augustine redefines sexual integrity as a purely spiritual quality that physical defilement cannot taint; the Romans had viewed rape and other forms of ("sex crime") within a political context as crimes against the citizen's body and liberty.

The first Christian emperor Constantine redefined rape as a public offense rather than as a private wrong. Since under Roman law raptus could also mean cases of abduction or elopement without the head of household's permission, Constantine ordered that if the female had consented, she should be punished along with the male "abductor" by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, "on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help." As a participant to the rape, she was punished under law by being disinherited, regardless of the wishes of her family. Even if she and her family consented to a marriage as the result of an elopement, the marriage was legally void.

Under the Emperor Justinian I, new penalties were enacted for the abduction ( raptus) of nuns. Even attempting the abduction of nuns for marriage or sexual purposes was to be punished by death. Constantine's law against sexual abduction was changed to shift blame to the man, on the assumption that the participation of the woman, even if voluntary, was caused by male seduction. The law for other kinds of sexual violence continued to be handled by means of the older Roman legal principles governing cases of 'stuprum.'

In some cultures, rape was seen less as a crime against a particular girl or woman than as a crime against the head of the household or against chastity. As a consequence, the rape of a virgin was often a more serious crime than of a non-virgin, even a wife or widow, and the rape of a prostitute or other unchaste woman was, in some laws, not a crime because her chastity could not be harmed. Furthermore, the woman's consent was under many legal systems not a defense. In seventeenth-century France, even marriage without parental consent was classified as rape.

The penalty for rape was often a fine, payable to the father or the husband, as they were in charge of household economy.

In some laws, the woman might marry the rapist instead of his receiving the legal penalty. This was especially prevalent in laws where the crime of rape did not include, as a necessary part, that it be against the woman's will, thus dividing the crime in the current meaning of rape, and a means for a couple to force their families to permit marriage.

Modern doctrines today have different views on the type of crime that rape is; it may be seen as:

rape as violence (principal wrong is the application of physical violence to the body, it is a physical harm - focuses on the body, on physical pain, injury)

rape as violation of autonomy (infringes on the right to decide with whom/when to have sexual relations, focuses on the mind; rape of men is seen as serious as rape of women; adopts broad definitions including rape by deception)

rape as invasion of integrity (a combination of the above views - focuses moderately on both body and mind)

rape as moral injury (an attack on the dignity of the woman victim, and by extension on the dignity of women as a class, a gendered crime)

radical feminist explanations of rape (sexual intercourse must be understood in the context of patriarchal society where women face systematic coercion and subordination; under these conditions genuine consent is difficult to be given; Robin Morgan argues: "Rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire"). Michelle Madden Dempsey and Jonathan Herring argue in Why Sexual Penetration Requires Justification, that sexual penetration of a woman by a man is a prima facie wrong, meaning that it requires justification in order to validate it, because of "the use of physical force required to achieve sexual penetration, the occurrence and risk of harm posed by sexual penetration, and the negative social meaning of sexual penetration in patriarchal societies."

According to a Sunni , the punishment for committing rape against a fellow Muslim is death, there is no sin on the victim, nor is there any worldly punishment ascribed to her. Most scholars treat rape as (disorder in the land).

Rape is defined as 'zina biljabr', fornication/adultery with the use of coercion or compulsion. Note that it has to be extra-marital, i.e. fornication/adultery; the rape charge cannot be brought against the husband by the wife, i.e. it cannot be within marriage. The Islamic law approach to rape provides a range of possible charges, and thus penalties, which the qadi may posit, hirabah being but one, yet the most severe of them. Thus the charge of zina may bring about a penalty of 100 lashes upon the perpetrator and the element of the use of force and or compulsion may be quantified, and thus punished serially or consecutively, that is a year's banishment, a prison sentence, a corporal sentence etc. It is to be noted that Hirabah is a Hadd penalty (i.e. one predicating a fixed choice, which in the case of Hirabah has three options at the discretion of the qadi). If the offence is deemed to not be a Hirabah offence then the penalties available to the qadi would be those of ta'zeer and will not be permitted to reach the level of either severe retributive physical harm (i.e. more than ten lashes of a whip) let alone execution. The interpretation and application of these laws is very controversial, not least due to modern ill-fated legislation,[according to whom? ] such as Pakistan's Hudood Ordinance, under General Zia ul-Haq, which arguably criminalizes the victim who fails to produce four witnesses, thus perverting the aim behind the law, to protect the victim of rape and grant her justice.[citation needed ]

In Islamic military jurisprudence, classical jurists laid down severe penalties for rebels who use "stealth attacks" and "spread terror". In this category, Muslim jurists included abductions, poisoning of water wells, arson, attacks against wayfarers and travellers ( highway robbery), assaults under the cover of night, and rape. The punishment for such crimes were severe, including death, regardless of the political convictions and religion of the perpetrator.

Rape, in the course of warfare, also dates back to antiquity, ancient enough to have been mentioned in the Bible. According to the Roman ius gentium ("law of nations" or international law), inhabitants of a conquered town were spared personal violence if the war or siege ended through diplomatic negotiations. But if the army victoriously entered the town by force, the conquering men could and would rape women (and sometimes adolescent boys) of the defeated peoples as one of the spoils of war. Some portion or all of the population of a town taken by force might also become slaves, who lacked legal protections against rape and who might be exploited as prostitutes or non-consensual sexual companions.

Rape, as an adjunct to warfare, was prohibited by the military codices of Richard II and Henry V (1385 and 1419 respectively). These laws formed the basis for convicting and executing rapists during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453).

Napoleon Bonaparte found rape committed by soldiers particularly distasteful. During his Egyptian Expedition, he declared that "everywhere, the rapist is a monster" and ordered that "anyone guilty of rape would be shot."

War rape as well as abduction of women was common both on behalf and Spanish and Mapuches in the Arauco War in Chile.

Bride kidnapping may feature rape, but this is not necessarily so. The practice of bride capture has become elaborate and ritualised in some cultures, with suggested links to the origin of the honeymoon. Bride capture is common in the cultures of Central Asia, and is also found in Southern Europe and is additionally practised traditionally by the Hmong.

In 1563, the Council of Trent expressly declared that legal Catholic marriages had to be done with consent of both parties, but did not require parental consent, essentially declaring forced marriages invalid. This was not universally accepted: for example, in France, women were not granted the right to marry without parental consent until 1793.

The criminal justice system of many countries was widely regarded as unfair to sexual assault victims. Both sexist stereotypes and common law combined to make rape a "criminal proceeding on which the victim and her behavior were tried rather than the defendant".

Adult women were often extremely reluctant to bring up charges of rape: public admission of having been raped was severely damaging to one's social standing, courts tended to be skeptical of the charges, conviction rates were low, and, in the event that the accusation could not be proved, the victim could then be accused of committing adultery with the rapist (traditionally a serious offense that could have been punished by mutilation or even death). Certain classes of women, such as prostitutes, were banned from raising accusations of rape altogether.

In the United States, before and during the American Civil War when chattel slavery was widespread, laws against rape were focused primarily on instances of black men raping white women, real or imagined. The penalty for such a crime in many jurisdictions was death or castration. The rape of a black woman, by any man, was considered legal. In some states during the 1950s, a white woman having consensual sex with a black man was considered rape.

Since the 1970s, many changes have occurred in the perception of sexual assault due in large part to the feminist movement and its public characterization of rape as a crime of power and control rather than purely of sex. In some countries the women's liberation movement of the 1970s created the first rape crisis centers. This movement was led by the National Organization for Women (NOW). One of the first two rape crisis centers, the D.C. Rape Crisis Center ([3]), opened in 1972. It was created to promote sensitivity and understanding of rape and its effects on the victim.

Marital rape first became a crime in the United States in the state of South Dakota in 1975. In 1993, North Carolina became the last state to outlaw marital rape. The marital rape exemption was abolished in England and Wales in 1991 by the House of Lords, in its judicial capacity, in the case of R v R [1991] 1 AC 599 ( more details).

In the 1980s, date or acquaintance rape first gained acknowledgment. Rape crisis centers were created to serve survivors of all forms of sexual violence during any phase of their healing process. Rape crisis centers and other community-based service providers continue to grow and serve their communities by providing direct services and prevention programming.

On September 2, 1998, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda delivered a precedent-setting verdict that made sexual violence a war crime. This was followed in November 1998 by the decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that acts of rape may constitute torture under international humanitarian law.

Current topics being debated are the marginalized victims of rape - domestic violence and rape victims, marital rape victims, male rape victims of both male and female rapists, female-female rape victims, parental-rape incest victims, and child sexual abuse victims. Other emerging issues are the concept of victim blaming and its causes, male rape survivors, male-male rape, female sexual aggression, new theories of rape and gender, date rape drugs and their effects as well as the psychological effects of rape trauma syndrome.

The ius primae noctis ("law of the first night") is a term now popularly used to describe a supposed legal right allowing the lord of an estate to take the virginity of his serfs' maiden daughters since little or no historical evidence has been unearthed from the Middle Ages to support the idea that such a right ever actually existed, although it may have simply been a habit of lords that could not be challenged by victims or their families due to the lord's status.

1. ^ Eckman, Zoe (2009). "An Oppressive Silence: The Evolution of the Raped Woman in Medieval France and England" (PDF). Historian: Journal of the Undergraduate History Department at New York University. 50: 68-77.

2. Amy Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the ^ cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.4 (1993), pp. 562-563. See also Digest 48.5.35 [34] on legal definitions of rape that included boys.

3. See further discussion at ^ Marriage in ancient Rome#Adultery and Sexuality in ancient Rome#Fidelity and adultery).

4. Under the ^ Lex Aquilia: Thomas A.J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 314; Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society, p. 119.

5. ^ Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 4.2.69-71; Richlin, "Not before Homosexuality," p. 565.

6. ^ Augustine, "The City of God," (Hendrickson, 2004), p. 14-15.

7. ^ Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Faber, 1967); see also Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune, Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook (Continuum, 1995), p. 219ff.; Melissa M. Matthes, The Rape of Lucretia and the Founding of Republics (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 68ff. (also on Machiavelli); Virginia Burrus, Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 125ff.; Amy Greenstadt, Rape and the Rise of the Author: Gendering Intention in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2009), p. 71; Melissa E. Sanchez, Erotic Subjects: The Sexuality of Politics in Early Modern English Literature (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 93ff.

8. Charles Matson Odahl, ^ Constantine and the Christian Empire (Routledge, 2004), p. 179; Timothy David Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 220; Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles (Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 36-37, characterizing Constantine's law as "unusually dramatic even for him."

9. Nghiem Nguyen, "Roman Rape: an Overview of Roman Rape Laws from the Republican Period to Justinian's Reign" ^ Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 13, no. 1 (2006): 110-111.

10. ^ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/31473687_Why_Sexual_Penetration_Requires_Justification

11. See, e.g., ^ http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=1369 and Asifa Quraishi. "Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective Archived 2008-12-08 at the Wayback Machine," in Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America, Gisela Webb (Ed.), Syracuse University Press (June 2000). Mentioned in verses

12. ^ Abou El Fadi, Khaled (2001), "Commentary: Terrorism is at Odds with Islamic Tradition", Los Angeles Times, archived from the original on 2017-08-23, ... Under the category of crimes of terror, the classical jurists included abductions, poisoning of water wells, arson, attacks against wayfarers and travelers, assaults under the cover of night and rape. For these crimes, regardless of the religious or political convictions of the perpetrators, Muslim jurists demanded the harshest penalties, including death...

13. On ancient Rome, see Sara Elise Phang, ^ Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 244, 253-254, 267-268 et passim. See also Sex in the Roman military.

14. ^ Sara Elise Phang (2001). The marriage of Roman soldiers (13 B.C.-A.D. 235): law and family in the imperial army. BRILL. p. 268. ISBN 90-04-12155-2.

15. ^ Guzmán, Carmen Luz (2013). "Las cautivas de las Siete Ciudades: El cautiverio de mujeres hispanocriollas durante la Guerra de Arauco, en la perspectiva de cuatro cronistas (s. XVII)" [The captives of the Seven Cities: The captivity of hispanic-creole women during the Arauco's War, from the insight of four chroniclers (17th century)]. Intus-Legere Historia (in Spanish). 7 (1): 77-97. doi:10.15691/07176864.2014.0.94 (inactive 31 October 2021).

16. ^ Angela Marie Howard Zophy; Angela Howard; Frances M. Kavenik (1990). Handbook of American women's history. Garland. ISBN 978-0-8240-8744-9.

17. Maschke, Karen J. ^ The Legal Response to Violence against Women. New York: Garland Pub., 1997. ISBN 9780815325192

18. Fourth Annual Report of ICTR to the General Assembly (1999), accessed at ^ [1] Archived 2014-01-03 at the Wayback Machine August 13, 2014

19. Sixth Annual Report of ICTY to the General Assembly (1999) accessed at ^ [2] March 23, 2007

20. ^ The jus primae noctis as a male power display: A review of historic sources with evolutionary interpretation Archived 2018-09-18 at the Wayback Machine. Fibri.de (1996-10-30). Retrieved on 2011-10-01.

21. ^ "The Straight Dope: Did medieval lords have "right of the first night" with the local brides?". straightdope.com.

Dejanikus, T. (1981). Rape Crisis Centers: Ten Years After. Off Our Backs, Washington: 14 (8) p. 17.

Pride, A. (1981) To respectability and back: A ten-year view of the anti-rape movement. Fight Back! (pp. 114-118).

Howard, Angela & Kavenik Francis. (2000). Handbook of American Women's History. CA: Sage Publications Inc.

Largen, M. (1981). "Grassroots Centers and National Task Forces: A History of the Anti-Rape Movement," Aegis: A Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women, Autumn.

Pierce, Karen F.; Deacy, Susan; Arafat, K. W. (2002). Rape in antiquity. London: The Classical Press of Wales in association with Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-3147-0.

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The concept of , both as an abduction and in the sexual sense (not always distinguishable), makes its appearance in early religious texts. From the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome into the Colonial period, rape along with arson, treason and murder was a capital offense.

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For much of the early history, sexual harassment and abuse-namely rape- was considered to be a defilement of a man's property (the father or the husband), rather than a crime against women. There was a disregard for the victim's feelings and trauma, and most of the punishments given reflect that.

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The anti-rape movement of the 1970's did not materialize from thin air. Like all significant changes in the evolution of human history, the Anti-rape Movement is - on the one hand - a manifestation of the gradual progress of an evolving culture and - at the same time - a noticeable shift in the prevailing norms, mores and beliefs of that culture.

The word "rape" is derived from the Latin rapere, meaning "to steal, seize, or carry away." Forcible seizure and rape were accepted methods of claiming a wife in early history - and, in some cultures, this still occurs. Owning property and gaining wealth were considered marks of manhood. This ownership revolved around possessions and without a wife, his lineage would end. According to Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Will, "Concepts of hierarchy, slavery and private property flowed from, and could only be predicated upon, the initial subjugation of women." ¹

Throughout most of history, rape was not viewed as a crime because women were considered property, and, therefore, without rights. Like taking land, men took women as an act of aggression; an affirmation of their strength and masculinity. In most cultures, marriages were arranged when the groom purchased the bride from her father. Rape was initially considered a crime only in terms of the property violation of another man. Punishment was delivered to a man who damaged the husband's property - his wife - by rape. Very often the raped woman would also be punished as an adulteress, regardless of her lack of complicity in the assault. For instance, ancient Hebrew women who were raped were considered defiled, and stoned to death.

Throughout English history, punishment for rape included castration or death of the rapist. However, to receive legal justice, a victim had to be born into the privileged classes: "...if a member of the feudal class committed his crimes against anyone other than the king or a great lord, he was fairly safe from prosecution, or at least from punishment," wrote Sidney Painter in History of the Middle Ages. Prior to the thirteenth century, a raped woman had to be a wealthy, propertied virgin to have legal recourse against her attacker.

In the late thirteenth century, English laws were rewritten to exact a penalty of death upon a man who raped an unmarried or married woman (except his own wife). Although this law was rarely enforced, it was one of the first laws making rape against all women a crime.

By the late 1700's in the United States, women, seemingly one by one, recognized the powerlessness of women in the face of male domination in the educational, social, political and economic institutions of this emerging nation.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote The Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1790. Wollstonecraft recognized the failure of contemporary education for girls and the powerlessness of women in unhappy marriages. She ridiculed the notion of women as meek and modest; as attractive and shallow playthings for men. She maintained that women should be equal partners to their husbands. For the first time, a woman put words to the experience and perception of many women - these words served as a galvanizing force.

Women "galvanizing as a force" began with the anti-slavery movement. The Grimke Sisters, Angelina and Sarah, were among early activists in the anti-slavery movement during the 1830s. They were born into a slave-holding family, but rejected their family and joined the Quakers who were notable abolitionists. They published a letter in the anti-slavery newspaper and later went on speaking tours against slavery and championed the rights of women. Work in the anti-slavery movement thrust women into the political, activist arena. This work gave women a forum for discussing injustice and recognizing the similarities with all women's lives.

The Women's Rights Convention of 1848 solidified because men attempted to silence the women at the earlier Anti-Slavery Convention. The 1848 convention represented the first major national organizing around women's rights. This convention grew out of abolitionism, which taught them how to organize, publicize and articulate a political protest. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Lucretia Mott are considered among the mothers of the early feminist movement. They were also abolitionists who loosely held the belief that women were, in some sense, slaves too.

Over 200 women attended the 1848 convention. The delegates passed the Declaration of Sentiments, written like the Declaration of Independence - calling on women to organize and petition for their rights. The right to vote passed by a narrow margin and was quite controversial - and a reflection of the racism so pervasive then (and now); tragically, women of color were not included in the right to vote. That decision and others resulted in a schism between white women and women of color that continues today.
Intersections of Race and Gender
Sojourner Truth connected the issues of women and race. She spoke of the role of black women in the fight for women's rights in her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman?"

In 1866, when the Memphis Riots occurred, Congress held hearings about the chaos and brutality during the riots. Black women testified before Congress about being gang raped by a white mob. These women were perhaps the first women to break the silence of rape.

The issue of rape, race, women and slavery was also addressed by a significant Supreme Court case, Missouri v. Celia in 1885. The decision is, of course, a travesty - a black slave woman is declared to be the property of her owner with no right to defend herself against his rape of her. A decade later, the Equal Rights Association became the first organization in the U.S. to advocate national women's suffrage.

During the post-Civil War years, women leaders gained more and more national attention as travel and communication systems improved. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony, along with fourteen other women, tried to register to vote; she was arrested and refused to pay the $100 fine. That same year, the Susan B. Anthony amendment, giving women the right to vote, was first introduced into Congress. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was also a notable black activist in the late 19 th century. Her anti-lynching campaign stirred more and more African-Americans to speak out about the horrors of racism and segregation.

By the early 1900s, women were re-defining their roles as wives, mothers and homemakers. Emma Goldman first wrote and spoke about women's reproductive issues, and Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, NY in 1916.

In 1920, women gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19 th Amendment. With new rights, greater emphasis on education, and massive mechanical and technological advances, women's opportunities for employment blossomed. It was no surprise that women joined the workforce en masse during World War II, and over 400,000 women joined the military.
The Second Wave
The second wave of women's activism began with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and the Student's Free Speech Movement of the 1960's. The Civil Rights Movement, through the inspiration and work of women like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, gave hope that groups of committed citizens can fight against injustice and institutionalized violence and obtain equal rights. Other social change movements at the time included: labor, peace and anti-Vietnam War. Betty Friedan's best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, sold millions of copies and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement. From the early consciousness raising groups to the establishment of women's studies programs in universities, women's voices, experiences and realities joined the public debate about radical shifts in the power structure of institutions and relationships. The anti-rape movement did not materialize out of thin air.

The anti-rape movement of the 1970's set out to change the world. It is not like there was a choice. It was something that had to be done in order for women to survive.

Imagine if you will, close your eyes and imagine, what women's lives were before 1970:

The North American Indian Women's Association did not exist;

The publication, Off Our Backs, had never been published;

There were no speak outs on rape;

There were no rape crisis centers;

There were no shelters for battered women;

MS. Magazine had not been published;

The National Women's Studies Association did not exist;

Women did not march in the University of Minnesota's marching band;

Abortion was not legal in the United States;

Girls could not play Little League baseball;

Olivia Records was nowhere to be heard;

There had never been a national lesbian feminist conference;

Women made less than 59 cents to a man's dollar;

Women's basketball was not an Olympic event;

The National Association of Black Professional Women did not exist nor did the National Alliance of Black Feminists;

The National Coalition Against Sexual Assault was 9 years from introduction; and

Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault was 32 years from introduction.

In 1970, women's lives were about to make an unprecedented break with the traditional image and role of American women. In the 1950's and 60's, the economic needs of families had prompted many women who had been employed during the war years to return to the labor force. Employment of women became more socially acceptable. At the same time, the emerging women's movement raised the issue of women's "second class status," our relegation to working and non-working roles that were less valued, not as profitable, less diverse and outside of the power and decision-making controlled by men, disproportionately white men. As more and more women began working outside of the home and pursuing educational opportunities beyond high school, women forever changed our society's definition of gender roles and our thinking about the value of female lives.

All of these shifts laid the groundwork for change: new rules about decision-making, power and authority. And women gave themselves and other women permission and support to risk the most intimate and most one-sided relationship we knew: our relationship to men. Whether we were married to men, partnered to men, hoping to be one or both, someday or again, or not interested in men as partners, we knew that revealing our pain, our joy, our frustration, our satisfaction, our ambivalence with and about men would be the hardest part of our work. Women knew from history that eventually men would concede some things: the right to work, better working conditions, the right to vote, a driver's license, admission to professional associations, even divorce. But women had never before demanded - as a movement - that gender roles change and that the expectations and the limits of behavior within those roles - would be now and forever defined by women. As Gloria Steinem said:

In our various ways we were mutually uncovering the secret of this land of opportunity. If you aren't born white and male in America, you are statistically likely to end up as some sort of support system for those who are...[women] realized that they shared problems as women, and they needed to support each other to have any power at all. As for rights of sexual expression and reproductive freedom, women finally discovered that all of us were endangered when one group was denied. ²

The National Organization for Women had pushed to bring women "into full participation in the mainstream of American society." NOW's agenda focused on reproduction, equal pay for equal work, child care, housework and sexuality, not to be confused with sexual orientation. We owe a debt of thanks for the achievements of the early women reformers. And we must also acknowledge that by the late 1960's, the feminist movement had not yet recognized or analyzed the impact of interpersonal violence on women's lives.
The Anti-Rape Movement

The work that needed to be done to stop the rape of women and lift us from the physical, psychological and institutional brutality of second-class citizenship became crystal clear when women spoke publicly about the rape in their lives. In January 1971 the New York Radical Feminists held a speak out on rape at St. Clement's Church in New York City. No one published the women's voices from that evening, but I imagine the stories were the same painful, heart wrenching and frightening stories we hear 35 years later. From those moments forward, rape victim advocates knew that fundamental changes must occur.

Perhaps the most profound analysis by early feminists is that they declared the private is not separate from the social or the political. The anti-rape movement embodied this analysis as reflected in the Chicago Women Against Rape's 1970's statement of purpose:

Rape violently reflects the sexism in a society where power is unequally distributed between women and men, black and white, poor and rich...In rape, the woman is not a sexual being but a vulnerable piece of public property; the man does not violate society's norms so much as take them to a logical conclusion. ³

The anti-rape movement listened to what survivors were saying. Survivors named those who blamed them for rape: law enforcement officers, prosecutors, their boyfriend, their friends, the authors of literature, the scholars of law, newspaper reporters, sports figures, their family, just about everyone who learned of their story.

The rape of Joan Little in August 1974 by a guard at the jail in Beaufort County, North Carolina, galvanized public focus on the horror and terror of rape. Joan Little, a black prisoner in the Beaufort County Jail, was attacked by the white jailer, Clarence Alligood. Joan broke away from her rapist, killed him with an ice pick he had taken into her cell and then broke free from the jail. She was caught and charged with murder, and Angela Davis led the national outcry to bring justice to Joan Little. Eventually Joan, her lawyers, Angela Davis, and public support prevailed. A jury acquitted Joan Little of killing Clarence Alligood. As Angela Davis so eloquently stated before Joan's trial:

All people who see themselves as members of the existing community of struggle for justice, equality, and progress have a responsibility to fulfill toward Joan Little. Those of us - women and men - who are black or people of color must understand the connection between racism and sexism that is so strikingly manifested in her case. Those of us who are white and women must grasp the issue of male supremacy in relationship to the racism and class bias which complicate and exacerbate it.

Let us be sure that the leitmotif running through every aspect of the campaign is unity. Our ability to achieve unity may mean the difference between life and death for sister Joan. Let us then forge among ourselves and our movements as indivisible strength and with it, let us halt and then crush the conspiracy against Joan Little's life. ⁴

Responding to a Need
The anti-rape movement sponsored speak outs, hosted forums and distributed literature and fact sheets correcting the lies and the myths, desperately trying to shift blame to where it belonged: with the rapist. The anti-rape movement listened as survivors courageously disclosed the sexual violation in their lives by men, sometimes known to the survivor, sometimes not. Sometimes, it was an incident occurring long ago, sometimes the night before. They said they did not have anyone to talk to about what happened. They said they wanted to go to the hospital, but were fearful that their humiliation would be multiplied and the origins of their injuries ignored. They never considered going to the police station.

These women said something needed to be created. Not for themselves, they said; it was too late. But they wanted to answer a telephone in the middle of the night to help chase away someone else's nightmare and they wanted to talk to nurses and doctors about how to treat a rape victim differently than anyone else who came to an emergency room. And they wanted to talk to teenagers and college kids and all the women in the community about how to avoid rape. And a few of them said they wanted to teach police about how to respond to a rape victim and how to interview her and to understand that women don't make up this "stuff" to get someone else in trouble. And many of the survivors said they wanted to stand in the streets or in the classroom or on television or in Congress or anywhere else to let people know that rape is about women being controlled by men; that men rape because they believe they have a right to rape and they believe they will get away with it; that men who rape believe they own the victim's body. Survivors were becoming activists.

As Sandra Butler said in a speech in 1996 to the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault:

We saw what we needed and made it up. It was that simple. Nobody knew how to create a rape crisis center. Negotiate a modified collective. Develop crisis intervention for abused adolescents. Create on-going support groups for adult women. Engage the criminal justice system as allies in the effort to engage women in seeking justice in traditional institutions. No one had yet learned how to create a protocol for examining a sexually abused child. No one. We were it. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other, making it up as we went along. ⁵

Survivors (and the women and men who supported them) said; if male authority, power, and privilege were re-distributed so that women had an equal share of that authority, rape would be eliminated. The reasoning was - and is - a person who respects another person as his equal will not rape her.

The social and political analysis of how domination is based on social relationships of unequal power can no more be separated from the work of rape crisis centers than the analysis of poverty can be separated from the goals of education. Understanding why rape occurs is an integral part of how to stop rape and how to heal from rape.

For nearly 35 years, the anti-rape movement has worked to overcome misconceptions about the origin and nature of sexual assault, prejudice toward victims and stereotypes about perpetrators. We have insisted that victims do not "ask for it" through provocative dress or behavior. We have maintained that an adult woman raped by a husband, or someone she knows, deserves the exact same justice and support as the child raped by a stranger. And we have been loud and clear about the fact that only rarely, oh so very rarely, does a victim falsely report rape. And we have insisted that someone who rapes is not necessarily crazy or mentally ill or deranged. They are simply men who believe they have the right to control a woman or adults who believe they have the right to control a child.

The goals of the anti-rape movement have changed very little in the past 35 years. As early as 1971-72, rape crisis workers established 24-hour crisis lines, conducted prevention education and training programs, created thousands of brochures, offered self-defense classes, organized and marched in "Take Back the Night" events and devoted thousands of hours to helping victims heal from the devastation of rape.

Rape crisis workers advocated - and continue to advocate - for legislative reform; insisted - and continue to insist - that police increase their arrest rates; demanded - and continue to demand - privacy for rape victims in emergency rooms; and urged - and continue to urge - that prosecutors change their plea negotiation procedures.

No one had learned in formal education or at professional conferences or in the media about how to do anti-rape work. But once survivors broke the silence about the terror of rape, women, and the men who supported them, devoted their minds, hearts, time and money to construct and sustain organizations that won groundbreaking victories. These organizations - rape crisis centers and state coalitions - changed practices in hospitals, police departments, the courts and within the field of psychiatry. And most importantly, women helped each other recover from the emotional and physical violation of rape.

As the anti-rape movement gained momentum, it became clear that this was a new field. Survivors and their advocates created rape crisis centers to fill a void - with a definition and purpose different than traditional mental health, public health or social services. With its mission of social change, equality between men and women, and its fundamental principle of victim-centered services, the anti-rape movement offered a new model for institutional policies and individual healing. This model gained recognition and credibility with each new accomplishment.

The joint efforts of the women's rights, women's liberationist and anti-rape movements yielded systemic changes; there were multiple occasions to celebrate legislative victories. Laws were created to standardize the collection of medical evidence in emergency rooms. The Rape Shield Law made the victim's sexual history irrelevant in trial and states overhauled sex crime statutes, making them gender neutral and creating a gradation of sex offenses in the effort to stop sanitizing the brutality of rape by calling it battery. New categories of victim service funds were authorized by states and Congress. The federal Victims of Crime Act of 1985 and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 dramatically changed the number of full-time staff in rape crisis centers in the United States. In turn, the number of victims and the increased visibility and viability of rape crisis centers in local communities has increased remarkably.

In establishing the facts about rape, rape survivors and counselors taught the community and related professionals about the impact of rape on the victim's life. Apart from the interpersonal, social and political hierarchies that perpetuate a rape culture, the single incident of rape is the most degrading, demeaning and humiliating violation perpetrated by one human being against another short of murder. And that is because it is about loss of control, loss of ownership, and loss of power over the one thing that is yours and no one else's: your body.

The counseling developed in rape crisis centers focused - and continues to focus - on the victim's ability and her right to reclaim control over her body and the decisions affecting her life. The victim determines the timing and the pace for relating her experience. She alone defines whether to report the rape to law enforcement and, if charges are recommended, whether to seek prosecution. She directs the course of her recovery. Rape crisis center personnel are there to support her decision and to facilitate her recovery.

Rape crisis services are the foundation to change public attitudes about rape and rape survivors. We have disclosed the use of violence to maintain power and control over women and children. We have educated the world that shame and guilt in rape belong to the perpetrator not the victim; we have shown that women can help women; and we have proven that feminism can re-define personal relationships and institutional practices.

We have struggled hard to change not only the sexism inherent in our personal and institutional relationships but the racism and classism that pervade beliefs and attitudes about people of color and people who are poor. From Susan Schechter in her book Women and Male Violence:

Throughout the anti-rape literature there is a recognition that the system sometimes helps 'legitimate' victims - white, married women who fought their [stranger] rapist and was visibly injured. Other victims - women of color, poor women, single women, women who dared to be out drinking or walking the streets late at night, prostitutes, women raped by judges or doctors - would never be consistently helped. Nor would the racist use of the rape charge, which helped whites brutalize the black community, ever cease without major social transformation. Exactly how rape was to be eliminated remained a difficult question. Profound social struggle would have to attack the sexism, racism and class domination in our society in order to end rape. ⁶

The anti-rape movement, led by survivors and rape crisis centers, has never lost sight of its beginnings. The anti-rape movement gained strength and integrity as it uncovered the connection between the personal and the political. In order to combine the first hand knowledge of anti-rape workers with the need to create a national forum for shared thinking and new thinking about the needs of rape survivors, the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NCASA) was established in 1978. From its beginnings, NCASA staunchly advocated for public polices, resources and collaborations that improved the lives of sexual assault victims.

NCASA sponsored a national conference each year for nineteen years to provide exemplary training and staff development for workers in the anti-sexual assault movement. NCASA worked diligently and creatively to maintain a national network of services for victims of sexual assault.

Over the years, there have been changes in the service delivery of rape crisis centers and in their visibility as the community leaders for social change. The magnitude and pervasiveness of that change is difficult to measure precisely. But rape crisis centers have been compelled to create trauma-based counseling and therapy services to respond to the increasingly complex issues presented by rape survivors. In many instances, counselors trained in traditional schools of social work, psychology or counseling have not been taught the political analysis of how rape is a natural consequence of women's historically unequal relationship to men. To a social worker or counselor not steeped in the origins of rape and the impact on a woman's life, the more obvious emotional and psychological indicators may distract that counselor from the devastation and insidious nature of rape. For instance, some women have coped with the pain of rape by using alcohol or drugs. If we do not understand, validate and empathize with the trauma of rape, we will identify alcohol or cocaine as the most serious or as the only problems in a woman's life. And that will distract us from how to do victim-centered counseling about the impact of rape.

The growing numbers of survivors that we see - and the growing complexity of their life struggles - feeds the other equally important reason for our existence: to eliminate inequality wherever we see it. Rape is about the threatening, intimidating and forceful behavior of one person against another. Rape is about the misuse of power; rape is the enforcement of domination and control. It is why men primarily rape women and adults rape children and not vice versa. Inequality is why white people stand a much better chance in this culture than a person of color. Inequality is why rich people not only live better, they will live longer to use up the resources of the world than will poor people. And until inequality is addressed and eliminated, we will have rape crisis centers and they will be overwhelmed with the individual, complex, excruciatingly painful needs of people who do not have anywhere else to turn. And until inequality is addressed and eliminated, we will have rape crisis centers that are not adequately staffed by or utilized by people of color. We must recognize, speak out about and hold fast about the devastating consequences of inequality wherever we see it. With racism, with rape, with any form of oppression, when we speak and act with integrity, we create change.

Our struggle to create change through our work is continual. To have adequate funds to do this work and to maintain the presence of victim-centered services and social change for our community, is often complicated by that necessary, elusive resource: money.

The first federal allocation of money for rape prevention and rape crisis services was distributed to sexual assault centers in 1982 through the Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant. Those funds continue to be a strong base for rape crisis work. Subsequent funds through the Victims of Crime Act, and the Violence Against Women Act have enabled centers to hire advocates, counselors and prevention educators.

Passed by Congress, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), created new penalties for gender related violence and established the Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) Program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and S.T.O.P. grant funds administered by the Department of Justice. The Act was enhanced and re-authorized in 2000 and 2006.

RPE supports rape prevention and education programs in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories. Nearly $44 million is distributed by the CDC which is less than $1 million each when divided among all of the states, territories and D.C. Obviously, $44 million is not enough to support rape prevention in America today.

Awareness and prevention programs, a cornerstone of RPE Programs, are implemented in a variety of settings. Sexual assault crisis centers conduct programs in schools and in non-school settings with youth, faith-based institutions, and community-based organizations. Many RPE grantees focus on programs aimed at promoting healthy relationships and changing the social norms that permit rape.

The RPE Program also provides crucial support for state and local sexual assault hotlines. These hotlines provide 24-hour crisis intervention, referrals, and information about sexual violence. In 2004, RPE-supported hotlines received more than 400,098 calls. The hotlines provide a vital link to services for victims; the hotline call may be her first disclosure, a crisis call during a flashback to a long-ago assault, a request for an advocate at the hospital or any other request for immediate support or information.

VAWA has made a difference. RPE has made a difference. RPE has pushed prevention to the forefront of our work in crisis centers. The focus has shifted away from teaching women and girls to stay safe. Now we have returned to our roots: focusing on social change...on promoting male responsibility for stopping rape...on undoing the attitudes and associated behaviors that say it is okay for men to sexually exploit and violate women and children.

This is real change...change that will make a difference. And now, the government allocates funds to support change: to help us eradicate sexism, racism and the rape culture we live in. We have come so far. And we have so far to go.

I see several clear goals for the future of the anti-rape movement.

One goal for our future is for rape crisis centers to hold on to the movement - to retain the unique voice and philosophy and passion that lit the fire in the first place. Rape crisis centers and state coalitions need to challenge government and private funders to remember who started the movement: victims. And why they started the movement: they had truths to tell and needs to assert and they were tired of being silent, pathologized, medicalized, marginalized. As we professionalize and standardize our services - all good things, mind you - we need to retain the heart of the movement - which is first about listening to each victim's story. Which is supporting her or him as the survivor sifts through options and moves steadily forward. Which is saying to the community: men must stop the rape of women and men and adults must stop the rape of children. This challenge calls men to speak up against rape, to stand up against sexism, to hold other men accountable, to demand justice and safety for all women and children, to support the crisis and prevention services of every crisis center - with their money, with their time, with their consciences.

Another goal for our future is to broaden our vision and our services. We need to increase our outreach to victims and communities that have been long underserved: people of color, people with disabilities, non-English speakers, the elderly and those whose sexual orientation or identity does not fit the traditional heterosexual/male/female niches. We need to create and enhance models to serve those populations. Those models start with making our centers more closely reflect the entire community. Crisis centers staff, board and volunteers need to look like the populations they serve and need to develop competence to serve these populations.

One more goal takes us into the world of the flesh industry. We have long been aware that pornography culture supports rape culture. That prostitution and sex trafficking are inextricably linked with the sexual subjugation of women. We need to use this knowledge to respond to those who are commodified, prostituted, kidnapped, held captive - whether by economic threats, coercion or force. We need to start building the service and prevention network to serve these victims of commercial sexual exploitation. And we need to prevent these abuses and the rape culture they magnify. This will take more resources, more research, more learning and teaching and development of models we cannot yet envision. We created all the services that exist today - and we have this new work within us.

Throughout all of our work toward these goals, we must focus simultaneously on the elimination of racism in this society. The immorality, injustice and deadliness of racism is inseparable from the immorality, injustice and deadliness of the sexism that perpetuates rape. And we have never gotten this quite right from the beginning. Let me describe the racism that oppresses African American people in this country as an example and how it served - and continues to serve - to undermine us in our efforts to bring equality and safety to everyone's life. The unpunished rape of black females by white masters and other white men during slavery, and throughout the 19 th and early 20 th century, and the brutal lynching of black men predicated on false accusations of rape have deeply affected the anti-rape movement. Since the beginning of the anti-rape movement, the women who spoke out about rape demanded more and better law enforcement to improve the apprehension and arrest of rapists; they demanded tough prosecution and serious penalties for the rapist. This pro-law and order stance by victims - and the feminists who supported victims in their fight for justice - flew in the face of many African American people who had raised the consciousness of America about the disproportionate number of black men in our jails and prisons, both at that time and throughout much of our history.

As you know, many female anti-rape activists came from the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the peace movement, the black power movement. Many of them were leaders in the new feminist movement. And they were committed to uncovering and challenging the racism and oppression that pervaded America and was reflected in our laws and criminal justice system. White women activists did not consider their anti-rape work as contributing to historically racist practices nor did they see it as less important than any other struggle for freedom and safety. And while that viewpoint may have reflected the true intentions of their hearts and may have been necessary to sustain the seriousness of the work, it exacted a price on the overall goal of freedom and safety for all oppressed Americans.

African American women activists could easily see the no-win, collision course that anti-sexism and anti-racism had unwittingly climbed aboard. Black women saw in the civil rights and black power movement an opportunity for the brotherhood of African American men to climb out of the demeaned and usually impoverished status imposed by the white powers-that-be who feared their equality. At the same time, African American women understood sexism and its practices, but they could not refuse the promising rise of black men from second-class citizenship. With the spectra of forward movement on the legal, political and economic playing fields for black people, black women were going to be there for black men.

And for reasons that are sometimes clear, sometimes unclear and always a source of great debate, these two great movements for human rights ended up with a wedge between them instead of a partnership. ⁷ And while I believe that women of color and white women in the anti-rape movement have forged working partnerships and friendships with one another as in few other places in the American labor force, there continues to be tension and unfinished work between women of color and white women that is a consequence of this history of slavery and the refusal of far too many white Americans to acknowledge those consequences and denounce their immoral and divisive impact.

Oppression is pervasive and hurts us all, though not in the same ways. The experience of the oppressed group is very different. They can speak accurately about the daily experience of oppression - the slights, indignities, threats, fear, losses, degradation that accumulate in the mind, spirit, heart and body of the oppressed. Those with privilege cannot tell that story. Nor should that person try. Rather, those of us with privilege must learn the reality of that privilege and how to use it to promote justice.

None of us invented these oppressions; we inherited a legacy of centuries. We also inherited the power to change it. There is no such thing as passive anti-oppression. We are either actively working against oppression or we are colluding with it, allowing it to continue in our name.

The Anti-Rape Movement is an impressive group of women - and like the Marines, with a few good men, we are making a difference. We said we would change the world and we see enough daylight at the end of the tunnel that we pull one another onward.

The myths we hold are the most significant barrier to ending sexual violence. It is not enough that the medical profession provides appropriate and effective medical care and evidence collection. It is not enough that law enforcement intervenes and interviews victims appropriately and effectively. It is not enough that prosecutors vigorously pursue prosecution appropriately and effectively. It is not enough that judges conduct trials and give jury instructions appropriately and effectively. It is not enough that jurors, who may well be you and me, reach our decisions appropriately and effectively. It is not enough that advocates provide support and assistance appropriately and effectively. We must do more with our hearts and minds. We must hold and share deep compassion for sexual assault survivors and we must work to replace myths about rape, the victims of rape and the perpetrators of the most heinous crime short of murder, with truths about the origin of rape and its impact on the victim and our communities.

I love what Martha Burt, Janet Gornich and Karen Pittman wrote in 1984. Listen to their words. They are still pertinent today:

This work is never easy, either in terms of time or of the psychological stresses of repeatedly confronting the realities of rape in this culture. In addition, it seldom pays very well, if it pays at all. Thus the fact that so many people continue to do this work is encouraging. We take it as a sign of how well the feminist movement's political activity raised issues surrounding rape and galvanized many women to devote their energies to trying to stop it and ameliorating the consequences. The movement's insistence that society bears some responsibility for changing patterns of sexual assault continues to guide the activities of many rape crisis centers. For most women working in rape crisis centers, their activities reflect some level of commitment, often very great, to helping women help themselves recover and emerge strong after an assault experience. Recognizing and building on this base of commitment, rape crisis centers may want to be able to reexamine feminist analysis, take a new look at their understandings and expectations and reformulate their goals for their communities, their centers and themselves. ⁸

We can make this a more caring and supportive nation for survivors of sexual assault. And we can work together to stop rape so we can tell our communities that rape crisis services are no longer needed. It is the only choice we have in face of the alternative.
A Brief History of the Anti-Rape Movement was adapted from an October 2006 speech by Polly Poskin, Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault
End notes:

1. Brownmiller, Susan, Against Our Will. Simon and Schuster, 1975, pp. 17-18.

2. Levine, Suzanne and Harriet Lyons, eds., The Decade of Women: A MS. History of the Seventies in Words and Pictures, Paragon Books, New York, 1980, p. 11.

3. Schecter, Susan. Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggle of the Battered Women's Movement. South End Press, Boston, 1982, p. 35.

4. Davis, Angela. "Joan Little: The Dialectics of Rape." Ms. Magazine, June 1975, p. 108.

5. Butler, Sandra. "Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Celebration," A speech to the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault Conference, San Francisco, CA, November 1996.

6. Schecter, Susan. Women and Male Violence, p 38.

7. While the words on pp. 49-52 are mine, I am grateful to Angela Davis for her original social/political analysis on this issue.

8. Burt, Martha, Janet Gornich and Karen Pittman. "Feminism and Rape Crisis Centers," A Research Paper, The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C., 1984, p. 23.

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A Brief History of the Anti-Rape Movement - Resource Sharing Project

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The anti-rape movement of the 1970's did not materialize from thin air. Like all significant changes in the evolution of human history, the Anti-rape Movement is - on the one hand - a manifestation of the gradual progress of an evolving culture and - at the same time - a noticeable shift in the prevailing norms, mores and beliefs of that culture.

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WHO fact sheet on violence against women providing key facts and information on the scope of the problem, health consequences, prevention, WHO response.

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On average, there are 463,634 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States.¹

Younger People Are at the Highest Risk of Sexual Violence

Ages 12-34 are the highest risk years for rape and sexual assault.³

Those age 65 and older are 92% less likely than 12-24 year olds to be a victim of rape or sexual assault, and 83% less likely than 25-49 year olds.⁴

Read more statistics about about child sexual abuse.
Women and Girls Experience Sexual Violence at High Rates

Millions of women in the United States have experienced rape.

As of 1998, an estimated 17.7 million American women had been victims of attempted or completed rape.⁵

Young women are especially at risk.

82% of all juvenile victims are female. 90% of adult rape victims are female.⁶

Females ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.³

Women ages 18-24 who are college students are 3 times more likely than women in general to experience sexual violence. Females of the same age who are not enrolled in college are 4 times more likely.⁷

Read more statistics about campus sexual violence.

Men and Boys Are Also Affected by Sexual Violence

Millions of men in the United States have been victims of rape.

As of 1998, 2.78 million men in the U.S. had been victims of attempted or completed rape.⁵

About 3% of American men-or 1 in 33-have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.⁵

1 out of every 10 rape victims are male.

Transgender Students Are at Higher Risk for Sexual Violence

21% of TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonconforming) college students have been sexually assaulted, compared to 18% of non-TGQN females, and 4% of non-TGQN males.

Sexual Violence Can Have Long-Term Effects on Victims

The likelihood that a person suffers suicidal or depressive thoughts increases after sexual violence.

94% of women who are raped experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the two weeks following the rape.⁹

30% of women report symptoms of PTSD 9 months after the rape.10

33% of women who are raped contemplate suicide.¹¹

13% of women who are raped attempt suicide.¹¹

Approximately 70% of rape or sexual assault victims experience moderate to severe distress, a larger percentage than for any other violent crime.¹²

People who have been sexually assaulted are more likely to use drugs than the general public.

3.4 times more likely to use marijuana

6 times more likely to use cocaine

10 times more likely to use other major drugs

Sexual violence also affects victims' relationships with their family, friends, and co-workers. ¹²

38% of victims of sexual violence experience work or school problems, which can include significant problems with a boss, coworker, or peer.

37% experience family/friend problems, including getting into arguments more frequently than before, not feeling able to trust their family/friends, or not feeling as close to them as before the crime.

84% of survivors who were victimized by an intimate partner experience professional or emotional issues, including moderate to severe distress, or increased problems at work or school.

79% of survivors who were victimized by a family member, close friend or acquaintance experience professional or emotional issues, including moderate to severe distress, or increased problems at work or school.

67% of survivors who were victimized by a stranger experience professional or emotional issues, including moderate to severe distress, or increased problems at work or school.

Victims are at risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Studies suggest that the chance of getting pregnant from one-time, unprotected intercourse is between 3.1-5%¹³, depending on a multitude of factors, including the time of month intercourse occurs, whether contraceptives are used, and the age of the female. The average number of rapes and sexual assaults against females of childbearing age is approximately 250,000. Thus, the number of children conceived from rape each year in the United States might range from 7,750-12,500.¹² This is a very general estimate, and the actual number may differ. This statistic presents information from a number of different studies. Further, this information may not take into account factors which increase or decrease the likelihood of pregnancy, including, but not limited to: impact of birth control or condom use at the time of attack or infertility. RAINN presents this data for educational purposes only, and strongly recommends using the citations to review sources for more information and detail.

Native Americans Are at the Greatest Risk of Sexual Violence

On average, American Indians ages 12 and older experience 5,900 sexual assaults per year.¹⁴

American Indians are twice as likely to experience a rape/sexual assault compared to all races.

41% of sexual assaults against American Indians are committed by a stranger; 34% by an acquaintance; and 25% by an intimate or family member.

Sexual Violence Affects Thousands of Prisoners Across the Country

An estimated 80,600 inmates each year experience sexual violence while in prison or jail. ¹⁵

60% of all sexual violence against inmates is perpetrated by jail or prison staff.¹⁵

More than 50% of the sexual contact between inmate and staff member-all of which is illegal-is nonconsensual.¹⁵

Sexual Violence in the Military Often Goes Unreported

6,053 military members reported experiencing sexual assault during military service in FY 2018. DoD estimates about 20,500 service members experienced sexual assault that year. ¹⁶

DoD estimates 6.2% of active duty women and 0.7% of active duty men experienced sexual assault in FY 2018.

Understanding RAINN's statistics

Sexual violence is notoriously difficult to measure, and there is no single source of data that provides a complete picture of the crime. On RAINN's website, we have tried to select the most reliable source of statistics for each topic. The primary data source we use is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which is an annual study conducted by the Justice Department. To conduct NCVS, researchers interview tens of thousands of Americans each year to learn about crimes that they've experienced. Based on those interviews, the study provides estimates of the total number of crimes, including those that were not reported to police. While NCVS has a number of limitations (most importantly, children under age 12 are not included), overall, it is the most reliable source of crime statistics in the U.S.

We have also relied on other Justice Department studies, as well as data from the Department of Health and Human Services and other government and academic sources. When assembling these statistics, we have generally retained the wording used by the authors. Statistics are presented for educational purposes only. Each statistic includes a footnote citation for the original source, where you can find information about the methodology and a definition of terms.

Learn more about RAINN's statistics.

Sources:​

1. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2019 (2020). Note: RAINN applies a 5-year rolling average to adjust for changes in the year-to-year NCVS survey data.

2. i. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders (1997); ii. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crimes Against the Elderly, 2003-2013 (2014).

3. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders (1997).

4. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crimes Against the Elderly, 2003-2013 (2014).

5. National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey (1998). (Statistic presents information on the total number of male and female victims in the United States, using a study from 1998. Because the U.S. population has increased substantially since then, it is probable that the number of victims has, as well. RAINN presents this data for educational purposes only, and strongly recommends using the citations to review any and all sources for more information and detail.)

6. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement (2000).

7. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Rape and Sexual Victimization Among College-Aged Females, 1995-2013 (2014).

8. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010 (2013).

9. D.S. Riggs, T. Murdock, W. Walsh, A prospective examination of post-traumatic stress disorder in rape victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress 455-475 (1992).

10. J. R. T. Davidson & E. B. Foa (Eds.) Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: DSM-IV and Beyond. American Psychiatric Press: Washington, DC. (pp. 23-36).

11. DG Kilpatrick, CN Edumuds, AK Seymour. Rape in America: A Report to the Nation. Arlington, VA: National Victim Center and Medical University of South Carolina (1992).

12. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Socio-emotional Impact of Violent Crime (2014).

13. Allen J. Wilcox, David B. Dunson, Clarice R. Weinberg, James Trussell, and Donna Day Baird, Likelihood of Contraception with a Single Act of Intercourse: Providing Benchmark Rates for Assessment of Post-Coital Contraceptives, Contraception Journal, (2001).

14. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, American Indians and Crime, 1992-2002 (2004).

15. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011-2012 (2013).

16. Department of Defense, Fiscal Year 2019 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, (2020).

17. David Cantor, Bonnie Fisher, Susan Chibnall, Reanna Townsend, et. al. Association of American Universities (AAU), Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct (September 21, 2015). (" Victim services agency" is defined in this study as a "public or privately funded organization that provides victims with support and services to aid their recovery, offer protection, guide them through the criminal justice process, and assist with obtaining restitution." RAINN presents this data for educational purposes only, and strongly recommends using the citations to review any and all sources for more information and detail.)

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1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.